compulsive

compulsion: the movieYesterday Tony blogged about his Compulsive Order Disorder... which seemed both a little odd and a little timely to me, since I've had a halfassed list of compulsive things that I do sitting next to the computer for over a week now.

I'd been trying to come up with the Top Five Compulsive Things I Do list... but kind of got stuck after number 2... at least of things that I think actually are compulsive...

But after reading Tony's post this morning I realised that there are a bunch of things that I do that would fit handily into the Compulsive Order Disorder category...
  1. When opening a new jar of Fudge Hair Varnish (or similar wax product), I always have to run my finger around the outside of the edge when scooping up product... all the way down to the bottom of the jar, so I end up with essentially an untouched tower of wax in the centre of the jar. When I've hit rock bottom I either roll the tower around the edge of the jar and scoop it that way, or, like this time, just squish it onto the side of the jar and scoop like a normal person.
  2. Currently, or at least since the Big Kitchen Cleanup, I have to wash, wipe and put away whatever dishes I've used that day before I go to bed. Not because I have any great desire to have said dishes back where they belong in the cupboard like Tony, but just so that my kitchen is as tidy as possible. This is actually the compulsion that I'm the happiest about at present and that I hope sticks around.
  3. I've pointed the next two out before... firstly when organising my bookcases, I have my books arranged from tallest on the left, to the shortest on the right on each shelf, and all the books are lined up with the edge of the shelf. I couldn't organise them any other way, not even alphabetically... because then they would look untidy.
  4. Both my DVD Collection and CD stand are arranged alphabetically (the CDs by artist then title)... but I'm going to plead the "organisational" defense on this one... I have so many DVDs and CDs that it would be too hard to find anything if I organised them any other way. The fact that I have all my DVDs listed on a page online in HTML with links to IMDb is pure OCD though... it was originally so I could let my boss at the time see what I had, but I've kept doing it, and now it's mostly for Ma's benefit (in theory).
  5. Another book related compulsion is that I just won't read the second or third or fourth book in a series if I haven't read all the ones before it. Which is why there have been whole collections of books languishing on my shelves over time because I couldn't find the first book in the set... I think I gave most of those away in the last grand Book Cull though. The only notable exception to this is actually Terry Pratchett... although I couldn't tell you why...
  6. I have to go through the TV guide every Sunday with a pen and mark out the shows I really want to watch... I'm going to claim that one as "organisational" too... although I think it's actually borderline. I just like to be able to see at a glance if there's something I'm supposed to be watching.
And then there's my obsession with vaguely pointless anniversaries... I'm sure there are a bunch of things I'm all COD about, but I can't think of them at the moment...

I did used to have this thing about making lists though... it even got to the point at one stage where I had a list of all the other lists...

Does getting really easily distracted looking for images in Google count as a compulsion?

No, I didn't think so either...

Current Mood: a little dopey

2 comments:

yani said...

Okay, so "should" was the wrong choice of word... although I don't necessarily agree with the "wouldn't miss too badly" thing... in some cases anyway...

While I wouldn't lose sleep over missing an episode of The Glass House for example, I would be highly miffed if I missed out on an episode of Lost...

S said...

God, you're such an OCD freak!!

Kidding.

Actually, a little OCD is good, since it keeps us organized (and people who say negative things about us are just messy and sloppy individuals).