Jar of Juice

OCD Overboard

It’s funny when you spend 3-4 hours a day alone in the car, arguing with yourself.

Yup you read that right! That’s me.

I’m undiagnosed but it’s safe to say I am pretty much OCD. If it ain’t symmetrical, it ain’t right. Although I LOVE spontaneous events and days… I have to be mentally prepared for them. When I went to Amman for instance I have mentally prepared myself that the week would be unorganized chaotic fun.

But take for example yesterday. Punctuality is something I worship. My technical architect told me he would be meeting me at 4:30. He knows I leave office at 5, because there is a long chain of events that follow that depend on me leaving at 5.

At 4:27 I was panicking.

He came in at 4:42 and we finished up at 5:18. In Dubai, traffic-dependent schedules are pushed by an exponential factor per lost minute.

Knowing from experience the traffic load on the roads, I went through an alternate route that’s longer but less congested. However my brain just could not get over the fact that I had to take such a long route because my fuel tank had been filled under the assumption it would be enough to get me to my sister’s work and back home through the normal route.

Which meant I had to stop by to refill at a petrol station which cost me more time and threw my OCD thought patterns out of the window - because I had calculated I would be filling it at the petrol station next to the supermarket where I’d be able to purchase some goods by the time the tank is topped.

With that out of the window I wouldn’t be able to purchase from the supermarket, with the time lost factor multiplier I had to cancel the supermarket if I were to complete my other pending tasks I had to finish before 11 PM.

But that meant something else and the list really went on and on and on.

And that’s how I think, most of the time, most of the day, every day!

Of course, I mentally typed this post while I was driving to office, complete with the typos and with this paragraph informing you about it

I know my problem, which is a great thing. I am aware of almost all my problems. I just am not able to fix myself - because my brain is so awesome it knows the solutions and therefore renders itself immune to them.

Which is why I have been coercing my colleague at work secretly without my brain’s subconscious awareness to help me over the past few weeks, so he got me a nice book which I would be reading.

Now of course the issue is - to find the time to read it!

Posted in: humor, personal