Posts Tagged ‘obsession’
Orange Obsession
It has come to my attention that I can obsess with relative ease. Obsession is something I prefer to avoid due to the preoccupation filling a mind constantly and intrusively to a troubling extent. It’s just not mentally healthy.
When a glimpse of blaze orange appeared from our front yard about 45 meters (50 yards) into the woods to our north, Asher and I both took notice. Asher wanted to freeze and stare while I preferred acting nonchalant and continuing as if oblivious.
Once inside, I didn’t hesitate to whip out the binoculars to see if I could verify the possibility there was a hunter crouched beyond a ridge, waiting for a deer to wander close. Unfortunately, I couldn’t improve on the basic perception of a small blob of orange. There was just too much distance for my wimpy binoculars and too many branches or tree trunks obscuring the view.
After staring for far too long in the hope of seeing some movement, I gave up and decided to check back periodically to see if it was still there. Hours eventually turned to days and I was able to convince myself it was not a hunter but more likely a hat or some other article of outdoor clothing that had been dropped and lost.
That didn’t stop me from continuing to look for it every time I walked nearby. I was curious if the hunter would return in search of the lost item, all the while reminding myself that our usual privacy was likely being invaded for random periods during the 8 days of the deer hunting season.
Eventually, enough days passed that I decided to deal with my trending obsession fascination with the blaze-orange object by taking the risk of walking into the neighbor’s woods to see what it was.
It wasn’t a hat. It is a hand warmer with a strap that wraps around the waist to secure it… unless it doesn’t. I would expect the hunter’s hands would get cold enough that he or she would have missed it and retraced steps to retrieve it at some point.
Turning around to look back at our house, I had a renewed sense of weirdness over a person walking so close to our place that is otherwise very secluded.
I picked up the hand warmer and walked a short distance to the plowed field where I hung it up prominently in view for someone to find should they come looking for it.
This morning we heard a couple of close shots from the other side of our property. It has been relatively quiet for the six days between last Saturday morning’s gunshots.
Tomorrow is the last day of the hunt. I look forward to the return of wildlife being the only creatures wandering around in the woods surrounding our house and an end to my seasonal obsession with blaze-orange sightings.
Knowing it’s a hand warmer hanging in some branches at the edge of the woods nearby will help me avoid obsessing over it, but I’ll check occasionally to see if anyone retrieves it.
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Opposing Forces
What triggered the thought in my head to ask, I do not know. My mild compulsion to seek order and repetition in my daily activities leads me to reset some things while often completely ignoring others. Really, the majority of my efforts for order are preemptive, enacted with the intent of easing future tasks.
One example of this is rinsing pans, dishes, and utensils instantly after use to avoid foods drying to the surface and becoming more difficult to clean later. Another version is clearing snow to a distance beyond the edges of the driveway or walkways to make it easier to clear future accumulations.
However, not all my impulses are entirely practical. This one is probably more aesthetic.
Recently, I noticed that I have repeatedly been adjusting the entryway rug inside our front door to pull it off the sill. I figured normal traffic or possibly an exuberant dog was causing the rug to slide up against the door, so I kept moving it back.
Then, for an unknown reason, I experienced a vivid moment of intuition that led me to ask Cyndie if she moves the front rug up against the door sill.
“Yes,” she said. “I do.”
Aha! We have been unknowingly operating at cross-purposes, doing battle back and forth with opposing intentions.
She was thinking about catching debris from dirty boots on the rug, so she surmised there should be no space between the rug and sill. I said we could just step onto the rug when we come inside.
Something in me senses the rug should be spaced away to avoid possible interference with opening the door.
Cyndie and I are very different in many ways, so it shouldn’t be all that surprising that we were working against each other in this regard, but it is always humorous to discover little details like this when we have been living together for over 40 years.
Our opposing forces may be part of our mutual attraction and balance the many ways we are alike. There is something to the adage that “opposites attract.” It’s rather magnetic, isn’t it?
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Ten Days
It appears that I can’t control my tongue, and it is becoming very irritating. Is it possible to eat our own teeth?
If you can put those two thoughts together, you probably already know what I have on my mind today.
Yesterday, after eating breakfast, my tongue detected an anomaly in one of my bottom front teeth. It was small enough to be confusing over whether it was a protrusion of something stuck between my teeth, or a hollow where a piece of tooth had chipped away.
After several futile attempts to assess the situation, logic indicated it must be a small chip in the tooth.
Where did it go? Did I eat it? Wouldn’t it have been crunchy?
I suppose it was small enough to be lost in the yogurt and cereal I was eating, without ever getting caught between the other chewing teeth, but the indentation from whence it came feels like a canyon to my tongue. It looks like it was a very small piece, but it feels like it was large.
Now I can’t keep my tongue off the rough edge that resulted. It’s a terrible unconscious obsession. A dentist friend of mine once told me it takes about ten days for our tongues to accept changes in the teeth before they finally give up and stop working at them.
Right now, ten days seems like an eternity. I looked up my next regularly scheduled dentist appointment and discovered it is for the middle of December. That seems like two eternities away, but this little chip honestly doesn’t warrant and special trip to the dentist to have her grind away the roughness.
My tongue just needs to learn faster. I am aware that products (like a wax) exist to protect the tongue from broken teeth, but then my tongue would spend just as much unconscious energy trying to get used to the wax.
It (my tongue) just needs to stop pushing against the ragged edge. How hard can that be?
I wonder if I can get a band-aid to stick to the tip of my tongue.
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Couldn’t Resist
Obsessive? Perfectionist? Linear? I just can’t help myself.
Last night I was preparing the post for today (June 1st!), giving a shout out to the PBS program, “Food – Delicious Science,” and in my over-tired stupor, inadvertently clicked the “Publish” button a day early.
So what? Who would even notice?
I would.
It messes with my order. I figure the mistake was a good indication of how excited I was about sharing the word on the incredibly informative program. It may also be a way to nudge me toward observing and contemplating my incessant drive to maintain a regular order of one-post-per-day. Or, it could simply be a result of not getting enough sleep at a time when my poor little brain is under a lot of stress.
Regardless, without this silly little addition to fill in the gap, June 1, 2017 would have looked as though there was no post on Relative Something. An aberration! Now, you and I understand that wasn’t the case, but what about others who stumble upon this place? I have to consider them.
So, instead of letting it go and getting on with important things, I gave in to the urge to right the wrong. Think about that.
Happy (extra post) June first!
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That John W. Hays.
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Relative Something 