I make off the cuff comments sometimes about being OCD but I'm not. I thought I was for sure until I finished reading more information online about it today. The best example I can give to prove I am not OCD, is my 'obsession' with an organized clean desk ... but my desk is not clean. LOL I will on occasion get the urge to clean every room in the house spotless but that doesn't mean I keep it that way. If I were OCD wouldn't I
NEED to keep things spotless?? My mother was like that.
One picture of my computer desk would show that it is not clean but organized. It is not overwhelmed with stacks of papers and other things. I still have the sorted photos in small stacks based on the hounds name, waiting to be scanned in a slow printer/scanner whenever I get the urge.
A few weeks ago I was looking at eBay to see what some old software was selling for plus some old VW maintenance manuals. I wanted to see if they were worth listing on eBay to sell. That small stack of software CD's and books are still there.
That is definitely not someone that has OCD.
What about my possible obsession with making spreadsheets for everything? These are the ones I keep updated:
- checkbook register w/auto payments all loaded for 2019
- monthly miles driven
- diet measurements
- income and expenses by category
- savings
- auto maintenance
- each hound has their own health log if sick or injured
- dental plan analysis
- grocery cost comparison with three stores
- internet data used
- personal health issues log
- best foods to eat sorted by research
- usernames and passwords
- daily electric kilowatt usage (why?)
That looks a little excessive to me. You too??
When I thought about all the spreadsheets I do, I was positive that would make me 100% OCD ... but there is a fine line to determine that and I am straddling the fence.
The determining question on OCD is: Am I doing those spreadsheets because I
want to or do I
need to?
Well almost immediately I would answer "I want to" but then when I think about what would I do if I lost all of them, deleted, totally gone .... would I
want to rebuild all of them or feel like I
need to rebuild all of them because I
had to have them?
Looking at that question I feel myself teetering, trying to balance myself from falling on the other side of the fence into the field of OCD.
I begin to see that I MAY not be doing all of this data entry because I
want to but because I
need to. The thought of stopping the checkbook register and the income & expenses by category makes me anxious. Instantly telling myself "no way, I'll never stop those."
A friend tells me that until I do stop them, I am not totally free.
The others listed I could stop doing them, have stopped doing them but came back to them. Understand that not all of these are updated daily. Nor does it take a lot of time for a couple of entries IF they happen.
For some of them the data is not logged in until something happens, like personal or hound health issues and new online research on food, dog food or whatever.
Sometimes I think I keep doing any kind of spreadsheet because it keeps me kinda attached to the job I retired from, where I lived on financial spreadsheets. It's not that I need that to feel good or anything because I love being retired and would do it again the same way same time frame. It just makes me wonder why I have such a strong attachment to spreadsheets.
There are those I use to update all the time but they have been retired and filed in my documents folder on the computer. Things like analysis for dog food, trading cars, buying or selling my house, moving west ... I also had a spreadsheet that gave me a good view of my finances if I were to retire.
In fact that specific spreadsheet told me it was a great move to retire and I could financially afford it.
So really there is a fine line between being OCD. Just because I keep a clean car with nothing laying around inside of it does not mean I am OCD. It's just that I like having a clean car. Now if I were to clean that car daily .... then I would be OCD.
I might be organized (all DVDs, CD, are alphabetized) and downsized, but my life has a 'lived in' look to it. I mean I wear my jeans more than two days in a row. Whereas growing up my mom washed my jeans daily and had them back in my room before I opened my eyes.
I always wondered what she thought of that stuff she would pull out of my pockets before washing them, that did not include car keys? Ha Ha
I want to look more into why my my brain is so scattered. Is it a getting older thing or have I been this way for years but never had the time to notice.
This post might be one of the few I have written publicly in seven years of blogging where I stuck to the same subject as the title.
What do you think of a post with no pictures?
Any thoughts or experiences with OCD?
