Learning | Experience (#7)

I confess, I’m already dreading the month of work. As time passes, I dislike my Aide position more and more. It’s no wonder that people move on so frequently, and that we have such high turnover. I enjoy organizing and filing, but the sheer monotony of my job–combined with the three grains of sand I get paid each month–robs me of my enthusiasm. It was much more enjoyable when I worked with Heather and Amy regularly; good friendship and conversation make the day go so much faster.  Now, I really only enjoy one shift, my Wednesday night, and despite the fact it precedes the nasty Thursday morning turnaround shift, I find myself rather looking forward to it. In the night, we are free, and a bit loopy.

It doesn’t help that I was swapped back to the morning shift on Monday, after being mercifully set free for a handful of months. I do not like Monday mornings, no sir, and here it is 8:55pm and I’m really not interested in going to bed in an hour when I have so much to write and do.

Excuse me a minute while I stomp my feet.

Thanks.

Inspired by my dread of tomorrow morning, I planned to fill out my FAFSA tonight. It’s on my List, after all. However, I learned that I need my W2 forms before I can do that. If I recall, they came at the end of January last year, perhaps a bit later. As a result, my quest for financial aid is going to be pushed back another few weeks. I know that I have eight months, but I’m really pretty antsy about it.

Then, of course, I thought I’d put together the barbell I bought for my next 8-week workout stretch (I’m currently enjoying a week of downtime and recovery, so just cardio in the mornings), and the stupid screw hole was stripped right out of the box. Despite 20 minutes of effort, I couldn’t get it put together. This means I’ll have to return it tomorrow after work and get a refund, which is fine, shit happens, but still annoying.

I did, however, manage to clean my kitchen, and the counters are sparkly again. At least, as sparkly as a weird brownish mud color can get. I really should have done some other things indirectly referred to on my damn List, like "take the pile of books I plan to sell off my dresser and actually sell them", and "throw away the magazines you’ve been wanting to throw away for years", and "clean the clothes off the floor", though the latter is often difficult unless I know people are coming over.

My cleaning is so much the "bunch of clutter/flurry of cleaning" dichotomy that it’s somewhat schizophrenic. I think living with a slob kinda broke me, because I just got tired of cleaning up her crap all the time, and got out of the habit of constantly cleaning. She simply outgenerated my ability to tidy, and was incapable of initiating any effort to remedy it unless I bitched.

This was one of the things that was part of my "surely I’m not supposed to be with a woman who" musings.  My environment affects my mood. I’ve always used a Ferris Bueller line to describe how I grew up.

Ferris: Cameron’s house is like a museum. It’s very cold, and very beautiful, and you’re not allowed to touch anything.

Whether nature or nurture, I know that I inherited this from my mother. I hate dirt, I hate the unclean. I have the urge to purify, even as I innately rebel against it precisely because my mother was such a stickler. I grew up never being able to clean to her satisfaction. I couldn’t dust right, I couldn’t straighten right, I couldn’t make the bed right. Really, aside from straightening, it’s very telling that I am ridiculously lazy about certain things that she was a stickler for–dusting and bedmaking in particular. I almost proudly refuse to make my bed, as if the walls of my apartment will grow arms and gladhand me for being such a renegade.

Seriously, I want (and probably need) a woman who is not cluttered–because man, if I have to live with another person whose idea of clean is "Well, that plate and glass that’s been sitting there for six days next to the couch doesn’t have mold on it, it’s fine", then I’m going to scream. Or someone who would rather engender a small mountain of everyday detritus than put it in drawers or throw it out. Take some gd pride in your living area.

I mean, they don’t have to be Martha Stewart, but at least make an effort. Visiting it is one thing. Living with it is something else entirely. I have a bit of stress from my messy Apartment, to be honest, though almost no one SEES it messy, just a bit cluttered. My biggest problem at The Apartment is that I simply lack room; I have almost zero storage space and as a result I have numerous piles of "things that I need to do when I have time". I miss things like a recessed pantry, or a living room closet. My kitchen in particular gets very cluttered, because I have one small card table that holds my snack food overflow (no room in cabinets) and well, not much else space. Grocery shopping is almost a nightmare because I have to come home and figure out where to put everything, because those almost-empty containers take up precious amounts of room until I can pitch ’em. Plus I don’t really have adequate storage for my weights, or the constant stream of books in transit to and from the library, or my collection of DVDs, or the fans I need in the summertime (no a/c). I need a dimensional hole that I can just put things into. Bugs Bunny had them. Why can’t I?

I hate, of course, the stuff that was already ugly when I got here, like the stained bathroom porcelain. One day, I hope to live somewhere that is new, fresh, beautiful, pristine, so that I can keep it that way and be proud. (Ugh, I just had a horrible thought about buying a house and watching my mate systematically treat it like crap. Let’s not go there. Not that I really can, since chances are, I won’t be buying a house til I’m like 50, if ever.)

And y’know, I just want someone around who wants to take care of things, too. That’s not too much to ask, is it? I may cook and clean, but I’m not a maid, and I certainly don’t want to be one again. With Barrett, my desire for the immaculate ran into a brick wall of resentment at her lack of care. Every time a plate would sit by the couch for five days, I’d quietly seethe. I wouldn’t nag, because I don’t believe in nagging, but I would just resent it, because it would invariably result in either me having to tell her to do it (which is insane for an adult), or do it myself for her (likewise absurd.) Neither made me happy. How hard is it to put your dishes in the sink, and take a little responsibility?

Caring is such a disadvantage.

I keep looking at that "desire for the immaculate", and considering this series of writings, it’s very easy to draw parallels to the need for perfectionism in #1 and #6, as well as my idealistic nature. Wanting everything to be uncorrupted, unsullied, un-nastified.

I might have made that last word up.

Still, this leads rather nicely into the next reflection, which is:

7. I am obsessive.
ob·ses·sion [uh b-sesh-uhn] -noun
1.    the domination of one’s thoughts or feelings by a persistent idea, image, desire, etc.
2.    the idea, image, desire, feeling, etc., itself.
3.    the state of being obsessed.
4.    the act of obsessing.

I’m a bit of a freak. It’s tempting to say (and has been said by some of the more dubious characters I’ve dated, though never the good ones) that I’m a control freak, but you know, for a control freak, I don’t have much of it.  I am not interested in controlling others, only myself; a lot of times people hear that phrase and think I’m trying to tell everyone what to do all the time, which isn’t the case. I’m a leader, which means by nature I may instruct people, but I’m not interested in micromanaging them or trying to direct what they say or do. I’m way too lazy for that. My hands-off style generally meets with very positive feedback. I firmly believe in treating others the way I like to be treated.

I’m not a control freak. But I’m definitely an order freak. I don’t live in a museum, I don’t have spotless counters, and I don’t really mind if there’s stray crumbs on the floor that you can barely see. I just like things being organized, put in their proper place. This makes me good at my job.

I’m a bit of a "I don’t trust other people to do it right when it’s important" freak, though I’ve gotten better at sitting back and letting someone else have a chance to shine (or fail).

But most of all, I’m a "you don’t tell me what I can and can’t do, where I can and can’t go, or who I can and can’t associate with" freak. This definitely developed in response to my mother attempting to tell me those exact things, but I innately dislike a lack of options, and hate being trapped. I need growth, and expansion, and progress, or I become frustrated. I don’t like to be cornered, I don’t like only having one way out.  I have an innate need for freedom and autonomy, even as I desire closeness and intimacy and a true union of heart and soul.

It’s no wonder I haven’t had much luck.

Obsession is a lack of control. It is your conscious mind being dominated by your subconscious. There are really two sides to this. One is an impetus to do a certain thing. The other is a constant repetitive process.

I’m constantly seeking perfection. That’s why I wanted to go into copyediting as a career, originally; because I cannot help but look at something and seek out errors. I want to make things RIGHT. I want to purge them of blemish and deficiency. Obsession comes from an inability to stop, the need to be thorough.

When I talk, for example, if someone asks me a question, I am unsatisfied unless I’m giving them a complete answer. I feel I must provide someone with a complete understanding of what I’m saying/arguing/implying, complete with reams of history and evidence. I have to exhaust whatever the thought is.

On some level, I know this is some form of compensation. I want to overwhelm them with answers. I want to demonstrate knowledge and thoroughness and thoughtfulness. I don’t want them to be disappointed because I couldn’t or wouldn’t answer them, or to be found lacking. God forbid you ask me something I don’t know and seem disappointed, because I’ll go far out of my way to prove myself by finding out the answer to your question. I know intellectually I’m not responsible for solving everyone’s problems, but man, do I want to. I don’t lack the ability to recognize when I will not find an answer, or when one is sufficient. No, the obsession comes with when I feel it is INsufficient, and I’m sure all of you reading this are going, "Pshaw, when would Wren feel insufficient? He’s never had problems with that!" Well, shocking as it is, you’ve found my Achilles heel once again, that fear of not being good enough. I want to be AnswerMan, hero to the ignorant, bringer of light to the unwise–though sans mask and cape because I’m not really into them.

No tights, either.

This desire for thoroughness is good for patrons (because I’m tireless and persistent in my pursuit). Sometimes, they leave, unsatisfied, and I’ll keep working on their problem even when they’re not there, in hopes of finding something so that I can go track them down elsewhere in the library and surprise them. I’ve done this, and often received a very positive response. Sometimes, they’ve left, which disappoints me, but at least I’m satisfied that I worked it through to the end.

Friends, on the other hand, often have to tell me to shush, because they’ve already heard my story before and don’t need the ten-minute prologue to whatever I’m making a point about.

I am:

in·de·fat·i·ga·ble [in-di-fat-i-guh-buhl] –adjective
1. incapable of being tired out; not yielding to fatigue; untiring.
I am relentless, determined, and unfaltering. q.v. Dedication and commitment.

At least it’s productive, and I can make a career out of it. I can’t, however, find any useful aspect of my infatuation with certain songs, where I listen to one song repeatedly. By repeatedly, I don’t mean a couple of times, I mean if there’s music on, that song is playing. I’ve lately been obsessed with Brandi Carlile; first, I had about a week of listening to The Story, then I moved to Until I Die and Turpentine, and then I would rotate between those three songs (and no others) until I reached my destination. Now, I’ve managed to work two additional songs into the mix, but if I go too long without hearing The Story or Until I Die, I get a bit anxious and have to listen to it a couple of more times. Anxious probably isn’t the right word. It’s not worrisome, or nerve-wracking. It’s not even a need per se. It’s just a persistent sense that I have to do it. An exigency.

I adore music, but it’s funny how I only generally listen to a handful of artists, because I listen to them for so long that it doesn’t leave room for other ones.

Kinda like women.

I’ve long fought my obsession with people I’m interested in. I have an obsession with names and birthdays; if I see a pretty woman, I have to have a name for her. I’m not going to stalk her (though I may go out of my way to catch another glimpse), or do anything creepy, or interact with her in a nonprofessional manner. But I need to know her name, have some sort of identity to slot beside my mental image of her. Interestingly, I often forget it soon thereafter; there are very few I actually remember, and sometimes I have to look people up multiple times. It’s innocuous, but it’s there, a steady compulsion.

I’m not OCD. Nor is my mother, though she fits a lot of the symptoms. Whatever she passed onto me, though, it’s definitely abnormal. I’m thankful that it’s harmless to others and only impacts me.
A lot of my obsessions are temporary, transient. Such is the case here. Once I find a name, the urge dissipates. Back to normal, until someone else catches my eye. I don’t always act on these urges, because I’ve worked very hard at exercising self-restraint (more on that in a bit.) However, they echo within my thoughts until I’m distracted by something else that actively demands my attention. One trouble with doing my work at the library is it’s incredibly passive and tedious. I can do it on autopilot, which means I spend a lot of time lost in my thoughts, which means I get trapped in thought circles. Hence my need for progress, for escape, for freedom. Because I yearn for it every day–from my own mind.

I’ll listen to Ms. Carlile for about six months, then it will have run its course, and I’ll put her away for awhile. Maybe a long while, only to be dragged out once in a blue moon when I don’t have an obsession going. Running its course..that’s really an apt description for everything. I need to spend myself, I need the needle on empty, I need to get it out of my system. I like pretty women, obviously, and every now and then I find one that I particularly enjoy. "She’d be a pretty desktop", I think, and so I go and look for random_Evangeline_Lilly_pic_01, and then find a few more, and before I know it, I have a file full of every picture I could possibly find of her. I’ll spend hours on it, collecting them like I’m hoarding twigs and brush to build a nest.

Then, which is somewhat amusing, I rarely (if ever) look at them, except when I switch my desktops around. I just have them, and that’s all that I needed to do, I HAD to get every possible Evangeline pic I could get my hands on until that appetite was satiated.

This need for possession is a very integral part of my obsession. When I was younger, I used to steal things. I’d steal pictures I found attractive. I’d steal books. Knick-knacks. Things I wanted for my own. I got in trouble for stealing from school, I narrowly avoided trouble for stealing from work. After I was arrested for shoplifting in college, I said to myself, I need to get this under control. And I did; I don’t steal, now, although I do borrow books from our donation pile from time to time to be returned or paid for later. That’s pretty innocuous, and really, I’m pretty proud. At times people are shocked to hear of my early kleptomania. I wish they knew what obsession is like, and how much work it took to wrestle it to the ground.

I evolved out of stealing as part of the process of changing my life and becoming the person I wanted to be.  I still have some photos in my possession of people I don’t know and places I’ve never been, and I have no idea when I got them, except that they’re a reminder of how far I’ve come. I look at them and I’m embarrassed for my former self. Will I ever escape the need to possess? No. But I can at least earn things rather than steal them.

The possession dynamic is really just another dimension of thoroughness, which is where my quirks most evidently display themselves to my friends and acquaintances. My thoroughness is seen in my writing, as well as my perfectionism. This entry was originally about how tired I was, and I was going to go to bed. Then, I wanted to pep it up so people wouldn’t be turned off by my entry. So I talked about cleaning. Then I started explaining the cleaning thing, which turned into a reflection. That led into obsession, because I had to explain it completely, and now it’s been two hours and three pages later, and I wanted to go to bed an hour ago. But I can’t, because I cannot go to bed until this is complete, done the right way, the way I want it. I’ve already edited out entire sections and added more, adjusted words and phrases twenty times. But dammit, when I’m done, you will KNOW my obsessive tendencies.

Because I have to do it.

There are things I can resist, and there are things I cannot. If I am not thorough, if I leave something unfinished, it will bother me. I would seriously go to bed and lay there and think of things I needed to say or add, and I would have to get up and write them down, or turn my computer back on and add them.

It needs to run its course.

I do this with everything.

I do it with food–I’ll find a food I like and eat it almost nonstop until I’m sick of it. The latest, by the way, was oatmeal, which I had at least daily, sometimes twice a day, for the last month. It’s run its course. Before that it was cream of wheat. Before that it was eggs in the morning. Before that it was chicken parmesan. Etc.

I do it with games–I acquire a game, usually in the first-person shooter or real-time strategy genre, and I play it anytime I have a free moment, until I’ve solved it or decided it’s not worth the effort. This has led to some fun weekends, 12+ hour marathons of gaming joy.

I do it with books–I’ll find an author or series I like, and have the need to collect the rest of them. Immediately. Even if–like Evangeline above–I don’t read them. I liked the first Sue Grafton novel and proceeded to collect the vast majority of the others in the series. I’m up to the third one out of 20, and it’s been over a year. Not really making good headway on that, am I? But at least I have them!

Lately, this also applies to television shows. I hate jumping into the middle. It used to simply be a fact of life. There was no streaming video, there weren’t DVD collections available. You just watched it when you could, and tried to catch them when they’re on. Interestingly, now that those are available, I have the freedom to NOT have to watch things at a certain time. Resultingly, I tend to collect/hoard episodes and watch them all at once. If I get into a show partway through, I have to watch the first seasons as quickly as possible to catch up on all the backstory. This happened with The Shield; I started in Season 4, and was so absorbed that simultaneously caught up on Seasons 1-3 during Season 4, in the span of a month, including a few 10- or 11- episode marathons.

I do it with information. This is again, good for my job. I hoard information. I collect it, and I collate it. I am lord of spreadsheets. I have folders upon folders of information about health and nutrition and exercise. Some of it I barely looked at, but the important thing is that I HAVE IT. Our poor photocopier at work was abused during that phase. Then it ran its course, and now I only rarely find something that’s worth copying and addingto the collection.  I do it with gaming info (hints/strategies), I do it with quotations (A Year in Words ftw), I do it even with useless things, like "lists of books I’ve read" or "books I want to read" or "movies I am interested in seeing, subdivided by genre".

I really like that nest image from earlier. It’s like I need 100 twigs to be secure, but once I hit that point, from 101 on I’m…normal.

But you know, up to that point..well, you should see the spreadsheet of data for when I was apartment hunting. Every apartment complex in the surrounding area–something like 120–with numbers, ratings, hyperlinks, nicely collated. Even when my car broke last month, within an evening I had an entire spreadsheet full of repair data, projected costs for used cars, links to sites about specific cars (after researching the inventory of nearby dealerships), consumer reviews, mathematical calculations about interest, total cost, how it fit into my budget, etc.

Yay reactive.

Life as a series of spreadsheets. Life as a collection.

Man, I wish I could go to bed right now. I’m not done yet, though.

We covered possession/collection and thoroughness. Hopefully you’re all intelligent enough to see how the latter relates to my perfectionism.

I really am somewhat surprised at myself for not realizing the perfectionism thing while I was growing up. I see it everywhere, now.

The other thing I obsess about is my personal life, i.e. relationships.

That’s where I get into trouble at work, because I have all of this time to fret. I would not consider myself insecure. I have a fair sense of self, I have a good idea of what my strengths and weaknesses are, and I consider myself fairly balanced. I have fears that are normal (abandonment, whether I can trust people, whether someone likes me), ones that I’m pretty sure everyone has. The problem is that I obsess when I don’t know something, or when the outcome is uncertain.

I spend most of my life pinning things down. Explaining. Understanding. Really, this is just another dimension to possession; it’s the ascertaining of something concrete. In this case, it’s knowledge.

So, let’s say I like a girl, and she seems interested. Guess what I’ll be thinking about nonstop? I’ll be analyzing, weighing, measuring, judging. I’ll be going over conversations. I’ll be holding imaginary ones. I’ll be arguing multiple sides in my head. I’ll run myself ragged. The benefit is that it makes me fairly perceptive. The downside is I drive myself nuts because I Can’t Shut Off My Brain.

I mean, I can’t. You can tell me, "well, think about something else," and I’ll tell you: I CAN’T. It escapes my control. Thoughts happen instantaneously. It’s not an urge, like "hey, I want that, steal it", to which I can say "screw that, that’s wrong". No, this is a constant stream of thought, full of the flotsam of emotion and the jetsam of worry. Sometimes, I’m able to distract myself momentarily, but like water spiraling down a drain, my thoughts eventually settle into the same circular pattern.

It makes it very hard to have crushes. When I want someone, she’s the One Thing I want. At times, this makes for a relationship.  It’s all about that feeling, that infatuation, that urge, and that need to consummate it and explore it to its furthest point.

To resolve.

I will confess that regardless of whether my relationships eventually fell into the good bin or the bad bin, they were passionate. Sometimes, however, desire goes unrequited, at which point I have to suffer and let it run its course. I’ve learned, after a lot of pain, how to back off, be less aggressive, not push it, not give in to my desires for more, more, more. But I can’t shut off my mind, and I’m always thinking it. That’s why I write poetry, as an outlet. That’s why I write letters to people that they’ll never read, just to get it out of my system. Writing is a vent, it’s a release, it’s catharsis. It’s almost like I’m faking myself into thinking I have something resolved.

The last chorus of Damien Rice’s "The Blower’s Daughter" perfectly expresses this:

I can’t take my mind off of you
I can’t take my mind off you
I can’t take my mind off of you
I can’t take my mind off you
I can’t take my mind off you
I can’t take my mind…
My mind…my mind…
‘Til I find somebody new

Aye. Can’t wait til I do.

This applies to anything I’m upset about. Breakups are horrible. I don’t know how I was able to function at work at all. My work definitely suffered–my boss said it was like I fell off a cliff. I did, I guess. On autopilot, there was nothing to jar me out of my moods; there were no patrons asking me questions and distracting me. It was just me, alone in the stacks, shelving books over and over again. The only bright spot was working with Heather, because then I could at least TALK. I had no other friends at that point in the area, I had no outlets. I was alone except for a few hours a week when I had the company of someone who gave a shit. 

This was not good for me.

I hate the unresolved.

Resolution is thoroughness is resolution.

I need to see it through to its end.

If you truly want to know me, if you truly want to understand me, memorize those nine words.

Apply them to everything in my life. To the way I treat relationships and infatuations. To the way I work, to the way I reach towards self-empowerment and evolution. To the way I collect data, to the way I analyze, to the way I tell stories. To the way I strive to excel and perform at my best. Everything boils down to that phrase.

I need to see it through to its end.

My grand irony is that I often appear to be such a paragon of self-control and discipline, when I can’t even corral my own thoughts. I’m able to have productive professional and personal relationships. I take care of business. To most eyes, I appear perfectly normal, just with a few quirks.

But there are always those undercurrents, always the parts people don’t see, always the thoughts I don’t share. I think sometimes I blind people with words.

Like I did here. It only took three hours.

Good night.