A big step forward

I have some OCD tendencies that I unequivocally get from my mother. I'm not obsessed with cleanliness or afraid of germs, as is so often associated with OCD. Public bathrooms skeeve me out, but I think there is something wrong with you if you don't have a problem with public bathrooms.

Anyway, I have pretty tame habits. When there are cracks in the floor I have to step so the crack lands in the center of my instep. When a passenger in a car and looking out the window, I have to nod to every telephone pole. I crave whole numbers and even numbers (even as a plateau concept, not the mathematical construct [ex. 12:00, $1.25, 75]). If I start reading a book, I have to finish it, regardless of how bad it is. And I crave completion and deletion in general.


Nothing life changing, but a little bothersome. For years I just left any change, even if it was 95 cents, lying where ever I got it. The completion craving is probably the worst, though. When I was 19, it caused me to buy 75 video games over the course of 3 months because I wanted to have a complete collection of swordfighting games for the PS2. More recently it caused me to try to play every Wii game that was out.

I did this with Gamefly. I have a 4 out service, so I would play 4 games, send them back and get four more. The turn around time with Gamefly sucks(full review to come later), so if I finished all 4 games in a night every time, I could play about 8 a week. This process was not fun, though. The speed in which new games came out made me return games I wasn't really finished playing yet, and the sheer amount of terrible games coming out made playing through them a chore.

So I was pretty far behind the releases, I consistently had about 40 wii games in my queue and about 10 unplayed that I couldn't fit in my queue. Then over the holidays I got preoccupied with my new DVD sets and tied up with work and the feature. I played and then returned games 2 days ago that I had had for nearly a month. My position made it seem like I would never get to those few ps2 and gamecube games on my queue that I still hadn't played.

But I've broken a hold of sorts. Today I deleted 32 games from my queue and added new games that I actually had an interest in playing. It's a step in the right direction, but I'm not holding my breath, or rather I am, so I can simultaneously exhale and enter a building leading off with my right foot.