I did what?
[Written but not proofread.] I just finished watching the Colorado Avalanche get totally dominated by the Anehiem Mighty Ducks (this is NHL hockey playoffs I'm whinning about.] 5-0. 5 to 0!!! It better mean that the Avs take this as a slap in the face and come back in game 2 with a lot more game than they played in this one!
I woke up early this morning. I was a little worried about my mood right out of the blocks, but for no apparent reason. The "spring in my step" from recent days gone by was just seemingly missing. There just seemed to be adversity from the beginning of the day, and I didn’t take it well. I seemed more frustrated than I have been lately. I have had this ongoing battle with the master bath shower door. It leaks water under the door during showers, I –fix- it. A couple days later, right after I put away the tools, it finds another place to leak. I -fix- it. And so on. I’ve -fixed- it about a dozen times and thought I had it beaten this time. It leaked again this morning. I sort of lost my temper, said I wanted to kick a hole in the f**king thing, but then caught myself and decided that I wasn’t going to let a bit of a bad start ruin my day. I actually pulled the day together nicely and played some good racquetball in a noon -shuttle- (An organized regular event, 4 of them a week at the club where I play, in which you play 4 or 5 fifteen minute games and then, depending on whether you win or lose the game, play another player in the next round either better than the last player or a little less skilled. Its fun because you are always playing someone different, which is how you really learn to play racquetball.) I decided today that a new racquet isn’t optional. It has to happen. I’m playing at a significant disadvantage with an older, shorter and less powerful racquet. I demo’d some racquets (again) and found -the one.- Its really amazing what a power difference an extra inch of length makes. Tennis racquets are 27 inches long (regulation) with about 115 sq inches of hitting surface. Racquetball racquets are now 23 inches long with around 107 sq inches. It won’t be long until a racquet is a racquet, regardless of sport! Turned out to be a very good day. Productive, happy, level headed. Just a good day after a rough start.
I have added another obsessive -hobby- to the list of OCD/manic activities. For years now, I have collected pennies. Not collected them like most collectors, maybe I should say I horded pennies. I have put into a jar and then rolled every penny I get as change for as long as I can remember. I was sure that the government was going to stop making them soon b/c our economy was too big to need them (actually, the government revealed just recently that it now costs more to make a penny than it is worth.) At first, I separated this huge jug of coins by coin denomination, and then I separated the pennies by year. Then, I decided that that wasn’t good enough, so I separated the years by mint. Then, I rolled then in mint years. I have roll after roll like this. Then, it just became all pennies. Last week, I took $96 (192 rolls) in rolled pennies to the bank. Just a month ago, I took in $108 in rolled coins (other than pennies) to the bank. Obsessive? Nooooooo. The up-side is that the $200 in coins I took in allowed me to buy a couple accessories for my iPod which will let me use it in combination with the home stereo, in my car, and to carry it safely while I run.
I think I have always had a hard time (and still do) keeping a clear the line between -enthusiasm- with a hobby or activity (or maybe even with people) and obsessive behavior. The problem, I think, is that I am also a master perfectionist. I always have to have the best of whatever it is I want or need. Nothing can ever be second rate. I’m never quite satisfied with anything. So, once I'm into something, I stay at it until I have all of the thing there is to collect, or I'm the best at the sport, or the thing is perfectly organized, or the writing is perfectly edited, or I have every piece of equipment I might need or have built the perfect equipment (i.e. the perfect triathlon bicycle). Or, I obsess until I realize that achieving perfection isn't possible, which pushes me away from the thing or activity, but there is always something else waiting in the wings. I wanted to learn Spanish, but it had to be Spanish such that I could converse with any Spanish-speaking native fluently, or it wasn’t good enough. I wanted to learn guitar, but it had to be such that I could jam with the proficiency of Jimi Hendrix or it was a failure. So, being the perfectionist just fuels the obsession. It gives me a constant motivator to do more and more until whatever it is just sort of overwhelms me and caves in. Recognizing these things about myself is educational, amazing, funny, and embarrassing (all at once.)
These traits, these OCD/manic tendencies, I’m discovering, have been with me as far back as I can remember. They are what made me good at sports as a kid. They are what allowed me to be state champion in 3 events in swimming when I was 18 and what gave me the motivation to make myself able to run 26 miles, or swim 20 miles. These obsessions have certainly had an upside in some situations. And had these things stayed solely manic, without the emergence of the depressive side, maybe had they stayed at the level which pushed me above and beyond most people and not escalated to the ridiculous stage, they would have been acceptable and tolerable. I think as the stress in my life increased, as my career took me to higher and higher places with more responsibility and more pressure, the little cracks in my mental wellness began to fail under the pressure and widen into big cracks and then gaping holes to the point in 2001 when I broke for the first time. Nothing has been the same since. But, thanks to the treatment I’ve received over the last 6 months, not only am I still alive but I’m beginning to be able to put the pieces together and figure out my own psyche. These revelations make me more able to manage and avoid some of my more obvious and controllable triggers, which let me get stringer and stronger.
Staying well is a day-to-day battle. I fight every day to stay on top of how (and what) I’m feeling. But I continue to believe that it’s a battle that I am now, for the first time in a long time, winning. Live it to its fullest, everyone. You never know when it might end. Take care of yourselves and those you care about.
I woke up early this morning. I was a little worried about my mood right out of the blocks, but for no apparent reason. The "spring in my step" from recent days gone by was just seemingly missing. There just seemed to be adversity from the beginning of the day, and I didn’t take it well. I seemed more frustrated than I have been lately. I have had this ongoing battle with the master bath shower door. It leaks water under the door during showers, I –fix- it. A couple days later, right after I put away the tools, it finds another place to leak. I -fix- it. And so on. I’ve -fixed- it about a dozen times and thought I had it beaten this time. It leaked again this morning. I sort of lost my temper, said I wanted to kick a hole in the f**king thing, but then caught myself and decided that I wasn’t going to let a bit of a bad start ruin my day. I actually pulled the day together nicely and played some good racquetball in a noon -shuttle- (An organized regular event, 4 of them a week at the club where I play, in which you play 4 or 5 fifteen minute games and then, depending on whether you win or lose the game, play another player in the next round either better than the last player or a little less skilled. Its fun because you are always playing someone different, which is how you really learn to play racquetball.) I decided today that a new racquet isn’t optional. It has to happen. I’m playing at a significant disadvantage with an older, shorter and less powerful racquet. I demo’d some racquets (again) and found -the one.- Its really amazing what a power difference an extra inch of length makes. Tennis racquets are 27 inches long (regulation) with about 115 sq inches of hitting surface. Racquetball racquets are now 23 inches long with around 107 sq inches. It won’t be long until a racquet is a racquet, regardless of sport! Turned out to be a very good day. Productive, happy, level headed. Just a good day after a rough start.
I have added another obsessive -hobby- to the list of OCD/manic activities. For years now, I have collected pennies. Not collected them like most collectors, maybe I should say I horded pennies. I have put into a jar and then rolled every penny I get as change for as long as I can remember. I was sure that the government was going to stop making them soon b/c our economy was too big to need them (actually, the government revealed just recently that it now costs more to make a penny than it is worth.) At first, I separated this huge jug of coins by coin denomination, and then I separated the pennies by year. Then, I decided that that wasn’t good enough, so I separated the years by mint. Then, I rolled then in mint years. I have roll after roll like this. Then, it just became all pennies. Last week, I took $96 (192 rolls) in rolled pennies to the bank. Just a month ago, I took in $108 in rolled coins (other than pennies) to the bank. Obsessive? Nooooooo. The up-side is that the $200 in coins I took in allowed me to buy a couple accessories for my iPod which will let me use it in combination with the home stereo, in my car, and to carry it safely while I run.
I think I have always had a hard time (and still do) keeping a clear the line between -enthusiasm- with a hobby or activity (or maybe even with people) and obsessive behavior. The problem, I think, is that I am also a master perfectionist. I always have to have the best of whatever it is I want or need. Nothing can ever be second rate. I’m never quite satisfied with anything. So, once I'm into something, I stay at it until I have all of the thing there is to collect, or I'm the best at the sport, or the thing is perfectly organized, or the writing is perfectly edited, or I have every piece of equipment I might need or have built the perfect equipment (i.e. the perfect triathlon bicycle). Or, I obsess until I realize that achieving perfection isn't possible, which pushes me away from the thing or activity, but there is always something else waiting in the wings. I wanted to learn Spanish, but it had to be Spanish such that I could converse with any Spanish-speaking native fluently, or it wasn’t good enough. I wanted to learn guitar, but it had to be such that I could jam with the proficiency of Jimi Hendrix or it was a failure. So, being the perfectionist just fuels the obsession. It gives me a constant motivator to do more and more until whatever it is just sort of overwhelms me and caves in. Recognizing these things about myself is educational, amazing, funny, and embarrassing (all at once.)
These traits, these OCD/manic tendencies, I’m discovering, have been with me as far back as I can remember. They are what made me good at sports as a kid. They are what allowed me to be state champion in 3 events in swimming when I was 18 and what gave me the motivation to make myself able to run 26 miles, or swim 20 miles. These obsessions have certainly had an upside in some situations. And had these things stayed solely manic, without the emergence of the depressive side, maybe had they stayed at the level which pushed me above and beyond most people and not escalated to the ridiculous stage, they would have been acceptable and tolerable. I think as the stress in my life increased, as my career took me to higher and higher places with more responsibility and more pressure, the little cracks in my mental wellness began to fail under the pressure and widen into big cracks and then gaping holes to the point in 2001 when I broke for the first time. Nothing has been the same since. But, thanks to the treatment I’ve received over the last 6 months, not only am I still alive but I’m beginning to be able to put the pieces together and figure out my own psyche. These revelations make me more able to manage and avoid some of my more obvious and controllable triggers, which let me get stringer and stronger.
Staying well is a day-to-day battle. I fight every day to stay on top of how (and what) I’m feeling. But I continue to believe that it’s a battle that I am now, for the first time in a long time, winning. Live it to its fullest, everyone. You never know when it might end. Take care of yourselves and those you care about.
posted by DeMental at 9:39 PM
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