Compulsion

December 10, 2005

My life tends to appear as to me one compulsive, and often impulsive, action after another. I am active on a listserv (an email list with many members who all use email to discuss a topic) and in the past few days I started posting to it. I found myself getting more and more caught up in the discussion to the point where I began to look forward to reading replies. That’s not a bad thing.

What’s bad is that tonight I suddenly felt out of control with it. I worried that I had said something over-the-top and kept thinking that I should shut up. I wanted to write my opinion to every post. Part of it was that the list is about storytelling and I’m really interested to discuss it. But not everything or everything needs my two cents.

Tonight I realized that I am obsessive and since I’m not eating sugar my obsessive behavior is transferring to other things. I heard Steve Barnes (author) say that he dealt with being obsessive by becoming obsessed with balance. For me right now, I’m going to try to transfer my obsession to health and fitness by way of Tai Chi.