Discover Top Posts Tagged with #obsessive planning

Sunday Morning Navel Gazing

I read a short article on The Guardian today about how people with chronic anxiety can be highly efficient in an emergency, even if it sometimes cripples them in every day life. I started thinking about myself. *Navel Gazing commence*

Over the events of the last four days I’ve been told twice what a problem solver I am. One of those was by a police officer (Teddy Bear in Charge from my earlier post) who observed how organized my brain was in assisting my friend go through some troubling emergency. Like the comedian said, quoted in the article, “This is what I do. This is my Olympics, what I’ve been training for.”

I wouldn’t call what I have as chronic anxiety - but I think I have a different flip-side version of it. I’m a obsessive planner, which can also be crippling. I have folders and folders of spreadsheets. Excel was made for people like me - I have tabs and tabs of lists open as we speak. One has every day upcoming, what I will wear, eat, and do - including most days an hour-by-hour breakout of what I will do and when. 8:30 breakfast (2 eggs, 2 bacon, 2 tortillas, 2 cups of coffee); 9:00 clean up breakfast and unload/load the dishwasher and take out the garbage (etc.) I check the weather multiple times a day for the upcoming week. “What if it rains, then I have to wear different shoes and then I can’t wear that skirt.”

I have camping packing lists, vacation packing lists, budgets, shopping lists, inventories. I shop online compulsively, but I don’t always buy. I will have a thought about something I might need, and then I’ll research the best brand, the best features, the best price, and then I move it to a wishlist. Sometimes I buy them. Sometimes, weeks later, I’ll decide that I don’t need it anymore. Abandon cart emails litter my email, but since I do consumer engagement strategy for a living, I file them away as examples in case I need to reference them later.

I am the same way with information on the internet, I can easily fall down rabbit holes of reference information. Filed away in my brain for later.

Big crowds exhaust me. In this way I’m usually called an introvert but I’m not sure it’s the same thing. So many people behaving unpredictably is like too much stimuli. I don’t mind being in a room full of close friends - I know them. I know what to expect.

But that’s the crux of it. These aren’t really anxiety - or not something I feel like needs to be medicated or corrected. But it does drive me in weird ways. I am only anxious if I don’t have a plan. I can even be spontaneous to a degree, but always and only calculated risks. I filter and sort and organize the plan as new information comes in and sometimes my brain plays chess imagining the 6 steps ahead. Its why I can be prepared in a crisis, but have an utter meltdown if in the span of 10 minutes if 3 things don’t happen as expected.

Anyway, that’s me. And I’m about to go on an unplanned breakfast run with some friends and I’m okay with it because there will be crepes and coffee.

#anxiety #obsessive planning #navel gazing #sunday morning thoughts

My trip to Italy becomes an adventure

So earlier on this week I found out that my layover in London calls for an airport transfer, which (after calling the travel service I used to book my tickets and waiting forever to find out that) I have to figure it out myself.

So after about a good 2 1/2 hours of research on public transportation (Including taxis, buses, the London Underground, shuttles, and express lines) and price comparing, I FINALLY FIGURED OUT THE CHEAPEST WAY TO GET FROM HEATHROW TO GATWICK!

AND

I found an online coupon to boot (because I have learned that paying full price for stuff is bunk).

So, now at 3:29 AM I am going to clean my room (to please my sister) and go to sleep satisfied and sound of mind.