You Down with OCD

Hello, my name is Gail and I have OCD.

 

Not the touch a doorknob three times before I open it kind, nor the mopping every day kind.

 

 

 

Selective OCD sums it up. Although it's not selective in the sense that I chose to have OCD. Because why would anyone choose that? I just have a few things that just have to go my way. Like at Jersey Mike's or Subway... if they have used a knife on another sandwich before mine, they need to wipe it off before they cut mine. Because I don't want mayonnaise remnants on my sub. I will have you remake it. Or handwriting... I don't like anyone else's handwriting on my stuff. It may be super pretty, but if it's not my font - because I write in all caps that lean slightly to the right, hence people calling it that - then I don't want it anywhere near my paperwork or calendars, etc.

 

And while everything in my house has a place, I'm not going to flip my lid if there's dust on my mantle or the blanket isn't folded correctly on the back of the chair. Will I eventually get to it because it will eventually bug me? Sure. But there aren't many instances where I will focus obsessively on something like that until it drives me bonkers. Do I color code things? Yes. When I had CDs and DVDs on display, were they in alphabetical order? Yes. Are the books on my bookcase in height order? Yes. C'mon now... I'm not an animal.

 

I have two large OCD obsessions....

 

#1 - Photos

 

#2 - Calendars

 

I have written before about my photo process (HERE) and how I need everything to be posted in chronological order - even if that's a pain in the ass to compile DSLR photos plus my phone photos plus DH's phone photos. God help us if Kimhead or my dad or someone else was involved too! They need to be labeled and all of that must happen before anyone looks at the albums. The one and only time I have had an honest-to-goodness panic attack was when I found out Kimhead had looked at photos I was uploading to my photo site following a trip to Birmingham before they were ready for anyone to see. I closed my office door and organized them for about 2 hours, not being able to focus on anything else. It was horrible, but I couldn't help myself. I learned a valuable lesson - keep the photo albums marked as private until I'm ready for them to be seen!

 

Now, calendars. I maintain quite a few. I keep a wall calendar at home as a "quick glance" reference for Puff and myself... which nights he needs to pick up Bimmer, days we're out of town, etc. I also keep a pocket calendar in my purse that acts as my lifeline. All my appointments (personal and work) are in there, pay days, when bills are due, when I'm going to start my period. If I order something online, the confirmation number goes in there. And then the ridiculous part... I always write down what I did and where I went that day. After the fact. If I talked to my dad on the phone, I write it down. If I went to the grocery store or Walgreens, I write it down. If I go to the gym, I write down how many laps I swam and if I weigh myself, I jot that down there too. I like to joke that if I'm ever interrogated about a murder, I can pull that out and remember exactly what I did on any given day!

 

At work, I keep two more. I keep a small calendar of the year hanging on the wall behind my computer, so I can always reference the date. And yes, it's color-coded. Yellow for weekends I have to work and pink for days off for either travel or holidays. My goal this year was to have pink in every single month. And I do! Yay! My other calendar is a weekly assignment book (like you would have used in high school) where I write down what I need to get accomplished each day. I work with a lot of deadlines and on lots of multiple projects at once, so I have to implement some type of organization system. I started this years ago and it just works for me. When I've called this person or met with that person, I squiggle a line through it and move on to the next task. It helps me prioritize and make sure I don't overlook anything! Kimhead is pretty organized too (although mine is much more OCD than hers) and she swears by a certain type of planner. It wouldn't work for me because there aren't lines and I can't handle anything to not be written straight. But you may love it as much as her (and many others) do. So check out her blog post about it HERE.

 

I did recently have a pretty-close-to-panic-attack about calendars in early January. I was trying to figure out my vacation days for the year and my comp days. (I am lucky enough to earn comp days for work incentives, weekends I have to work, business travel, etc.) They're implementing new policies on the comp days and I was trying to sort through all of the ones I have banked so that I don't lose any. Just as soon as I had updated my calendars, marking my days off and what type of comp/vacation day I was using, I got an email from my boss stating a change in the policy AND that I was earning an additional comp day I wasn't expecting. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!?! Cue full on start-of-a-panic attack... rapid heartbeat, jitters, etc. I immediately printed all the forms I would need to fill out and turned them in. For the year. And if I had 2015 travel plans already in the works, I would have turned those in too! It killed me to have to go back and white out things on the calendars I had just spent hours (literally... I spent about 2 hours on a random Tuesday at work obsessing over this when I had real work to do) marking down. In the end, the only solution? Spreadsheet.

 

So, now you know my dark OCD secrets. Do you have any strange quirks that are more OCD than just things that bug you? Do you understand the full-on panic of something being not exactly right? Do you have selective OCD like I do?