Something’s got to give

I’m not the most organised of people.

Extremely ironic, seeing as most people with OCD tend to live their life around routine. I’m definitely a habitual person but in my eyes the two aren’t as closely linked as you might think.

I’m always f**king late. To work. To dentist or doctors appointments, even to social events. I have no idea what it is, I just can’t seem to ever be on time.

Even if I get to somewhere early, I’ll end up doing something when there, that makes me ultimately late for the actual thing (think running to the toilet before a film starts to miss the opening scene…).

The real insult to injury? Being late makes me incredibly flustered.

I need to learn to be more organised. More in control of time keeping. But that’s easier said than done when I’m always on the go.

After a year of doing very little, the last few weeks feels like I’ve truly been thrust headfirst back into society.

I’ve loved every minute of it. But it is exhausting.

The only positive for myself during the pandemic was the opportunity to reflect and not feel guilty about how best to spend my time. Who to share it with, what to do with it etc. All of that was taken from us in the blink of an eye and there was something quite calming about not having to worry about plans.

The hustle and bustle of our usual lives just rolled to a halt. Morning walk’s to work were swapped for a lie in and logging in to your computer still in your pyjamas. Friday night pints were swapped for zoom quizzes. Still to this day, I get shudders down my spine when someone mentions how obsessed the nation was with online quizzes. Everyone thought they were some sort of quizzical genius taking part in their own version of the ‘Weakest bloody Link.’

Part of me felt relaxed during the first lockdown. Almost like there was no point in worrying about life before COVID-19 because this was going to be the norm for the foreseeable. But now it looks like we’re finally making some good strides towards a more normal world (ish…). You can see friends again. Socialise both inside and outside. Even hug. So, all of that free time that I truly valued over the last year has dissipated. And in its place? Well. There’s no two ways about this. There are plans coming out of my arse.

I love plans. I love socialising and yet it’s got to the point where I have something on most days, which I’m not complaining about…But something’s got to give.

With my OCD, I always have to be wary of not becoming too complacent. Whereas most people might feel overwhelmed every now and again by the sheer busyness of life, I have to make sure that I carve time out for myself to relax and detox. To let my mind switch off. Otherwise there is a risk of doing too much and burning myself out. Which for me, often or not leads to my OCD becoming exacerbated.

I’ve talked before about the need to constantly busy my mind. I feel like I have this energy pent up all of the time, which is essentially a form of defence that helps me to avoid the daily intrusive thoughts that come my way.

I workout 5 days a week. On average I run twice a week. I work full time. I play golf. I have golf lessons. I socialise and on top of that, I write these stories. I love all of these things and prior to society reopening, each of the above helped to give me a structure to an otherwise unstructured life. But now. Well now, I’m feeling slightly overwhelmed. Like I’m trying to do too much, and I can feel the inevitable ‘burning out’ looming.

Living life with OCD is like trying to tiptoe around an old creaky house, full of people in the dead of night. You’re constantly trying to avoid waking everything up. One foot in the wrong place and you’d wish you hadn’t bothered trying to do anything at all.

I think it’s fine to have all these plans and hobbies that keep my mind busy but as there is physically no way of finding more hours in the day, something either has to give or I need to be able to plan my time better.

It’s normal to feel overwhelmed right now. We’ve truly gone from busking and just sailing through life with nothing to do, to plans galore in a matter of weeks.

But the lesson of the last year has been clear. The way we were living our lives was not sustainable. So although I’m a huge advocate for being out and about, make sure you still take time for yourself.

And on that note…I’m off the jacuzzi. At 08:30am on a Tuesday morning. Cheers to flexi working.

Bald Eagle