Deadlines and Compulsiveness

Coming home after two days without sleep, I hurriedly opened my backpack and dug out the still warm, toasted sandwich. I couldn't make up my mind...do I get the sandwich out of the paper wrapper first? Do I get a coke from the fridge? Do I open the cabinets to get the giant bag of chips? Out was the sandwich and my backpack just dropped to the floor, I decided to eat it with one had as I grabbed a soda with the other, and forgot the chips since it was too much trouble to get them from the top cabinet. I was too hungry. One minute later, after my to-go sandwich was gone (pun intended) I looked around me.
What a mess. Overflowing trash cans, dirty dishes, unmade bed, dirty laundry, climbing gear from my last trip all over the floor.

Damn deadlines. You can't escape them, and in the process of meeting them, you have don't have time to clean up after yourself. My apartment is a war zone.

You don't understand. This is a major disaster. Have you ever watched Monk? Have you had a chance to see As Good as it Gets? Well, Adrian Monk and Melvin Udall might give you an idea of how anal (or, shall I say, obsessive compulsive?) I am. The funny thing is that I am aware of it and chose to be that way. In fact, I can easily suppress the obsessiveness, and I never do it around other people for fear of being ridiculed. But in the privacy of my own home, I get some sick pleasure from being as obsessive-compulsive as you can possibly imagine. Explain that. I just like it; I think of ways I can be even more anal. I straighten corners, stack up papers, line up cups, plates and mugs, fold pants right down the center and make sure all the coat hangers are exactly the same distance from one another. Of course I can;t do that when I'm in school and have stupid deadlines to meet (maybe I am the stupid one and should give up my sick obsession...oh well). Since you're taking the time to read this I guess you've earned the right to learn a little secret. Would you like to know what the latest addition to my bathroom cabinets is? A Windex and paper towels. Big deal, you say. Then I explain: Well, what happens is that every morning after I brush my teeth and shave, I reach for the windex and the paper towels and wipe the bathroom's mirror clean. I then line up my toothbrush and toothpaste parallel to each other on the right hand cabinet, and make sure the hand towel is straightened. Sigh.

Instead, today everything is out of place. The mirror is not clean, the dishes are dirty, the bed is undone. And the worst part is, my deadline got postponed! Well, this time the paper will have to wait, because I can't think straight with all this mess around me. And, being as obsessive as I am, I will also have to go rent As Good as it Gets, because I can't find a screen shot of the image I remember most vividly from the movie: Melvin opening his bathroom mirror's cabinet, revealing neatly stacked columns upon columns of new boxed soap bars, which he discards after one use. So if by any chance you see that image posted here, that actually means I drove three miles to the nearest Blockbuster, rented the movie, watched it, paused it on that scene and took a screen shot, which I later downloaded into my computer and I finally posted it here.

What can I say? At least the apartment will be clean by then.