The thought of getting on stage was monumentally scary. Guess that means I HAVE TO DO IT. So I did and have done so four times now. My latest goal is to create new material every week for a year. I missed the last open mic, but I had my stuff ready. I suppose that could be considered a failure, but do I get a pass?  (Note to self: You do realize you’re supposed to do one new thing a week? And admitting to having new material after the fact in no way compensates for a lack of blogging in several weeks. [Yes, self, I realize this.])

Here’s another scary thing: I’d love to do a show, one in which I advocate for OCD with humor and lightheartedness. This is scary because I’m writing it down, which essentially means I have to do it, which may be an impossibility (see above re: one new thing PER WEEK). I’d like to practice at the open mics as a way to polish my act (which doesn’t exist as of yet, but I just typed about my intent, so that should count for something. [It doesn’t count for anything]).

My thanks go to my students who had to listen to me practice during each lecture. Actually, I was teaching. That’s it. Pure unadulterated teaching. And a side of improv.

Cheers!

So this past week in new things was pretty exciting. I cruised through downtown to see for myself whether the revitalization efforts are paying off. They are, and Vegas is finally looking to have a cool area to hang. My new goal is to spend more time there, and that certainly won’t be a problem. Fremont Street still offers freak Vegas with a side of country, but things are shaping up.

My friend also bought a Jeep, and she let me drive it. I’ve never driven a Jeep, and I shouldn’t ever again. Because Abby will want a Jeep. Abby is not allowed to have a Jeep. Gotta keep the id under control. I also faced an ongoing fear; that is, I made a call regarding OCD treatment and refused to believe the person on the other end wanted to terrify me. Perhaps I exaggerate, but you don’t know who’s on the other line. It could be the Marshmallow Man. It could be a humpback whale with a vendetta against Jewish girls who drive Jeeps. It could be Newt Gingrich.

I can teach a class, conduct corporate training sessions, and jump out of an airplane, but I can’t make a phone call. Maybe my ego needs a kick in the pants too, but now it’s ice cream sandwich time! All hail id.

At any rate, I tried Rachel’s Kitchen this week, and I had their version of a breakfast wrap. They claim to offer healthy foods, so they wrapped my eggs in a wheat tortilla. Naturally, I drank a soda with it. The wrap was great, and while my budget necessitates a slightly cheaper meal, I’d recommend the joint and go there again, finances permitting.

To prove that I’ve stretched this past week, I will spare you the details of my semi-good convenience store pound cake. I could’ve talked about said pound cake because it was new to me. But then I realized that wasn’t much of a stretch, so I went to Rachel’s. Aren’t you glad I didn’t talk about the pound cake? (Sara Lee is so much better.)

So what’s new with you?

In truth, I meant to try something newer and exciting-er this past week. Although I said small things count, I wanted to stretch. Unfortunately, both my mind and body have been stretched too far of late. Lots of overtime means no self-care time means body shouting Stop! I got sick about mid-week and was down for the count. So I settled on pizza. A good pizza, to be sure, but not I just scaled Mt. Everest pizza. Or, as I put it to a friend recently, not unicorn awesome. Her news was unicorn awesome. Mine not so much.

But my downtime did afford me some mental stimulation in the form of several great articles on consciousness and writing and all other things that make me yearn for academia. As to what exciting-er thing I wanted to do, I can’t say. I was just open to possibilities. That’s what I like about one new thing. It keeps you open.

I do, however, know that OCD is all about control. That’s what drives anxiety. You don’t have control over the outcome of virtually anything, so you ritualize. Count to four. Four times. The world will still spin. The world will, of course, still spin even if you don’t ritualize. And people will still die even if you do. If only we had magical powers, we could make things just so.

Since we don’t and the best way of conquering anxiety is facing our fears, I’m going to do one new thing a week, preferably something that scares me. These things can be small – like the new restaurant I tried this week – or big – like skydiving big. Or not counting to four.

Not ritualizing is truly monumental, and I hope to explain that in the coming weeks. But for now, let’s experience novelty. One new thing a week. Report on it. Get back to me. I’m talking into the ether, but hopefully someone’s listening.

I could take Bartleby’s route and say, “I prefer not to.” Really, that’s the gist of it. To be sure, the OCD acrobatics aren’t terrible at the moment. In fact, like every good patient, I’ve taken to managing my own meds. (Read: I didn’t have insurance for a bit and couldn’t get the scrip refilled so in an effort to conserve I lowered my dosage and when I finally told my shrink he said that if I was fine with it he was fine with it but now maybe I’m thinking of hiring another shrink [To be fair, he was substituting for my normal shrink. (and by “normal” I mean “regular” though the DSM might chime in about my word choice [not that books can talk])] and all of this ramble-rousing [my word] is just an excuse to escape my culpability for lowering my dosage without my doctor’s permission.)

So the good news is I’m not taking as much medication! And my doctor doesn’t read my blog.

You don’t really have to experience pain to grow. Or perhaps you don’t have to do so repeatedly. My head is hard, and often I can’t tell when I’m falling into the same habits. Once I applied for a teaching job I really wanted. I had been an adjunct going for a full-time position. When I got to campus, I opened my car door to find a dead bird in the adjacent spot.  Then I looked up and saw the license plate on the car in front of mine: ItsOver. Appropriately, I wore a black dress, one my colleague said was a bit too funereal. I didn’t get the job.

Still, there was a second chance the following year. This time my phone was run over. These incidents didn’t faze me. I wasn’t a believer in signs. And yet. Some sort of existential Kafka-esque cosmic comedy was going on. Clearly the lines of communication between my brain and my career had been cut. Metaphorical overkill? Probably. But I’m a bit dim sometimes.

And I’ve never liked the idea of a career. I like dynamism and change and new things. The idea of a 9 to 5 for the rest of my working life leads me to thoughts beyond skin-picking. I’ve turned a corner (the same one actually; not a surprise there) and have decided to gain the freedom that I want in a job. But, you know, I’m like that dog who eats her own tail and wonders why she’s hurt.

The magnitude of my laziness is sometimes beyond my ken. At work (not my dream job), I used one of the communal spoons and built up this fantasy that I just couldn’t wash it because I was tired after a long day of sitting and so wouldn’t it be better to just bring it home and deal with it later? I’d become a purloiner of spoons for a lack of will to wash it. This is why the dead bird sings a dirge.

I have started pursuing new avenues of freedom. I aim to will blog about my progress.

I washed the spoon.

Turkey day is about giving thanks and overindulgence (very weird), and it was the food that got me. Not from Thanksgiving. Nope, it was the Italian food I ate two days after. Maybe it was retroactive gluttony at work. Nevertheless, I got sick.

I have a ton of reminders emblazoned on my body – these to remind me to stay humble, to embrace my imagination. A tattoo of the world here, a jester hat there. The compass. Oh that compass. Still, etching reminders into my skin is nothing like the body itself. Only the body can tell you to stop when you’ve been stressed too long. Only the body can tell you no when you’ve run around too much. Only the body can tell your stupid ego that enough is enough. Perhaps our minds aren’t distinct from ourselves, but they put up a darn good illusion (allusion?).

These reminders come in the shape of pain. A new study I read about today (see, I can’t relax) did some finagling with rats’ brains and scents. They trained one generation to avoid/have an aversion to a certain smell, and subsequent generations, not ever having been exposed to the scent, learned to avoid it. Again, I’m no scientist, but the authors of the study suggest that the fears of the father (and mother) get passed down to the sons and daughters. From one body to the next, we’re reminded of pain.

But I want to change the narrative. In order to get me to sit down and relax (writing this blog notwithstanding), I’ve had to be kicked in the guts. This isn’t a reminder so much as a plea. A plea for mindfulness. For meditation. For eating slowly. I can taste a sliver of red bell pepper in my mouth, tangy and sweet. Perhaps the shroud of food poisoning is lifting, or perhaps my body is saying thank you.

This would also explain why my mom only gets part of the newspaper more often than the whole thing. Sure, the delivery person could be screwing with her in an attempt to make her go digital, but I think it’s the house. The house eats the paper. Generally the lifestyle section.

Since my family and I are a bit odd, my mother asked me to do some reconnaissance. One day there were plastic-bagged objects sitting in some folks’ driveways. Except ours. Collectively, our vision is the equivalent of one schmo short of an eye patch (and that’s not why we miss the house). So who the heck knows what’s in the bags and it might be a newspaper and why don’t we go skulking around the hood and try to find out? There are a million answers to that question. I skulked.

Turns out these were plastic encased phone books, so dressed because we get an abundance of rain in this here desert. Given their multitude, apparently several other people on the block have also not gone digital. Perhaps their homes disappear too. Perhaps our house wants to evict us. We may all be delusional, but I’m certain the scorpions can find the house. Every. Single. Time.

I am a flawed human being. While I can say that I restrain myself from the possibly morally unsound choice of punching someone, I cannot say that I haven’t imagined their heads exploding a la Adam Bomb from Garbage Pail Kids fame. Because that’s what it’s like – an endless loop of explosions. Most of my compulsions occur inside my cranium, so perhaps I’m imploding. At the very least, there’s a thought bubble that travels with me whose interior looks like this: !@%&!!!

I want to say to those slightly touched individuals: “YOU’D KNOW IF YOU HAD IT.” But I’d probably scream it too loud because I can’t hear myself over the detonations in my head. Plus the room would get totally quiet right before I said anything because I’m blessed with perfect timing, and then people would wonder if I’d gone all Yellow Wallpaper on them. And it wouldn’t help that I like to gaze into the middle distance, mouth agape, arms akimbo.

My awkwardness doesn’t help me make a case for the seriousness of OCD. And my self-awareness doesn’t allow me to blame everything on OCD. Well, crap. I guess that means y’all can have OCD 2.0. I can share. But I’m not teaching you the secret handshake.