OCD

As a teacher I have been off work for a few weeks now and still have nearly two more to go. This gives me a lot of time. None of it I have used wisely. I blame the weather for my lack of doing any gardening except mowing the grass and my other task was to write a book, maybe think about two. A fiction book and a non fiction book. The fiction has turned out really average. I began writing it years ago and it stemmed form the being dumped by the very gorgeous man I'd be seeing for a while, just before Christmas.
It wasn't a good Christmas and I got through it with Meet The Parents, laughing.
Anyway, one evening drowning my sorrows in a bottle of Pinot, I decided my disastrous love life would make a good book, if you watered it down and exaggerated/toned down some of the characters. It was going well for a while and I'd written a few chapters which people said were good.
Then I lost it all.
That was a good 7 years ago I think. This Summer I planned to pick it up again from what I'd remembered and change the end - as the princess never did end up with the carriage mender - (see blog description). Now I think it would be sort of nice if she ended up being happy as she was but I can't write it for toffee.
My other book is one I have discussed with a colleague - but the new coalition government may decide to rain on our parade with the changes it plans for the curriculum.
So, this Summer I have done........ not a lot. I am now in a nice routine of staying up late, waking up at about nine, wasting most of the day and then repeating it all the next day. I also have a several times a week wake up in the early hours from my cat, asking to be let out. I have rigged the cat flap so he can come in but not out because I never see him, need to know he's ok and sometimes administer treatment to prevent fleas etc. I say rigged. It is sellotape. The carriage mender didn't put the catflap in properly so it has never offered the choice of in but not out without the aid of sellotape. I bought him a collar which said DO NOT FEED. I haven't put him on him yet. I obsess about whether I should and the safety of collars.
My mother said this week she thinks my OCD has got worse. Maybe this is purely down to time spent living alone, or maybe it's because I've had too much time on my hands. I certainly think during term time I am more focused. I seem to work better, the more I have to do and am much better at managing my time. All this time off has made me lazy.
But I do obsess.
I obsess about whether my front door is locked. I'll check it as I leave, walk down my path or out to my car through the garage, then go back and check again. Sometimes twice. I do the same with my GHD's. I should add, the door IS always shut and the GHD's are always off, unplugged and the socket switched off. Yes I am mental. I am better with my ears now - I won't go into this one again.
Other than this, I can't see that I have really bad OCD. Perhaps I am becoming a little bit DYSON-happy this last couple of weeks but that's no bad thing.....My mother also felt I was obsessing about my blisters. She contented herself and me though by saying she felt very sure that when they did clear up, I'd have found something else to worry and obsess about. She is right.
Who knows what the new head, year, class etc will bring but maybe it'll be a curb on my increasing OCD!

"Worrying is like a rocking chair, it gives you something to do, but it gets you nowhere." Glenn Turner

I wish my brain would understand the above concept.

At the end of 2008 I lost over a stone in weight. Not through any diet or exercise plan, but simply from worry. Now that those particular worries are dead and gone, the weight has stayed off....

How? I worry about that too!

I am one of life's worriers. I worry constantly about things that are beyond my control. People gather bundles of sticks to build bridges they never cross. ~Author Unknown

I worry about things that I should not worry about.

For instance, somebody I know posted something stupid and insensitive AGAIN on my Facebook page as they have done so many times before and to many people. Someone else who is a friend of mine, but not theirs, wrote in no uncertain terms, that the author of said comment was lacking in brain cells.

I felt bad about this. I worried about it. I worried about it to the point that I removed the offending comment. Not the original one, the reaction in my defence.

I worry about leaving my hair straighteners on, my plug sockets, my cat, the fact that my landlord does not know I have a cat, my workload, my family, my friends, my car....... etc etc.

Mostly I worry about whether I have upset people I care about.

All these things go totally against the whole idea which Rhonda Byrne, Jack Canfield, Anthony Robbins, John Assaraf etc have made a fortune from.

What you think about, you bring about.

I have read all manner of book on this subject, made Danny Wallace my idol, dabbled in Buddhism- LIVE IN THE NOW!, but do I learn? Quite simply no.

If you want to test your memory, try to recall what you were worrying about one year ago today. ~E. Joseph Cossman

This week I am trying VERY hard to stay focussed and positive.

Worry will not help me.

Tomorrow I am going for a one hour facial, an aromatherapy one. I did not choose a massage as last time I had one, my therapist practically had to use a toffee hammer to work out all the tension and I yelped in pain.

I like this quote, it says it beautifully and I will endeavour to embrace it! :

That the birds of worry and care fly over your head, this you cannot change, but that they build nests in your hair, this you can prevent. ~Chinese Proverb