A Breakthrough betwixt the Madness

"All life is an Experiment. The more Experiments you make the better." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson


My Therapeutic Experiment worked! I have created a portal to my new career path by communicating conundrums to you, my blog readers. (I just spent a month with the most amazing Grandma in the world, so excuse the influence of random colloquialisms in this post.)



Grandma & I entering It's a Small World on our Disney Day.



After releasing my 1st blog post which evoked some amazing feedback from my readers (thank you!), I was selected to write a few articles for a local magazine. Today, I received my assignments, and shortly thereafter, after reading and re-reading the emails sent by the publication, came a whirlwind of unstoppable formulating in my head  . . .

First, I called my Mom and nearly screamed in her ear with the same excitement I may have exuded when I was 5 and told we were going to Disneyland. Wait - for those of you who know me, I still get really excited about going to Disneyland. Who gets 100% accuracy on the Toy Story shooting game ride? Me! I think I'm drawn to shooting games, because my OCD comes in handy, enabling me to obsess about the target until I hit it perfectly every time. Anyway, my Mom congratulated me while stir-frying up a storm in the background and hung up to take the dog out.

Then, although I knew I should have focused on and tried to focus on finishing Alice Walker's The Way Forward is with a Broken Heart for tonight's book club (sorry, Girls - won't happen again), my mind began spinning at the thought of actually and finally being given the opportunity I have been waiting for since I decided to drive my hatch-back Honda 2,200 miles from the Midwest to the West Coast. I did it! But now I have to write the best articles of my life.

So what does an OCDite do when given the career opportunity of a lifetime? She starts tearing through her closet to find Feature Writing for Newspapers and Magazines: The Pursuit of Excellence Fourth Edition as well as Beyond the Inverted Pyramid: Effective Writing for Newspapers, Magazines and Specialized Publications, books that have collected dust over the years but are essential to composing the perfect magazine article . . . which these have to be! Underneath the old photos and cards, my college diploma and Canon in D sheet music for the piano, I found my journalism portfolio and these books from 2001. Was it really that long ago? I desperately wanted to hear my writing voice back when I felt I was on top of the world and surrounded by amazing writers and respected critics. I know it's in me, but how do I find that confidence again?

I'd like to ask you, readers: how do you return to those moments of feeling the best that you can be? Do you call your mother for words of encouragement? Do you reminisce about joyous historical events? Do you construct a list of all the things for which you are thankful? I would love to hear from my fellow OCDites: what process do you undergo to become fearless in the face of a daunting (as everything is with us), yet exhilarating project?

Tip for Controlling your excitement, anxiety and astonishment when given a project which requires creating a new 25-step process (we OCDites need a few more steps than 12): My Grandma would say something like, "Oh for Pete's sake! Pull up your bootstraps and do what you have to do." And she is right, of course. If we OCDites stop "fussing over" or let go of what could hold us back from achieving our goals, or even try going to the grocery store without making a blueprint out of a shopping list by product and the order of which aisle it is in (yes, I do this, but I can be in and out in under 15 minutes every time!), we have more room to let incredible situations come into our lives. I let go of thoughts of what was coming next, and an amazing opportunity came my way. (Thank you to the friends who helped make this happen.) Learning to let go is the best medicine for our disorder. It will remedy the tension in our head and give our friends and families a break from our repetitive behaviors.

Diversions, discoveries and a new direction . . . this experiment is healing! 

However, it does not change the fact that if you leave the loaf of bread in its plastic wrapper touching the toaster oven while toasting your cinnamon toast, the plastic will melt onto the stainless steel oven! Way to go, houseguest #5 of this month, you know who you are. Geez! By the way, sponges and scrubbers will not take the plastic off, but those Stainless Steel cleaning wipes from Home Depot work wonders!