Here lately I’ve realized that I have some compulsive issues that I have developed over time. Maybe it’s always been there but I’ve finally assigned goals to set up a schedule that works and I feel like I NEED to meet these goals or keep this schedule to bring joy into my life. Really, for ME it’s no issue. It has just become part of my life and so long as I keep a hold of these goals and schedule, I’m good.

Let’s dive in shall we. One day I was drinking my 73 oz water bottle and I realized that once I start I just drink and drink and drink until it’s gone. I have to mentally TELL MYSELF, “Hey, don’t drink all of that in one hour because your stomach will hurt. Spread it out.” Or I will literally just drink all of the water. My friends struggle to drink their water during the day and I think sometimes they resent the fact that I’m finishing mine so early in the day. I don’t know that it’s a good thing though! I drink it all, it goes through me, and then I’m back where I started. If I don’t get more water I’m still in the same place I was when I started!

I find that I have set the goal of 10k steps every day and that I have to hit my Apple Watch goals and if I don’t, I feel like I have failed and that that whole day was just a throw-away day. Not to say it hasn’t happened but when it does it’s all I can think about. I will stay up to all hours just to make sure I hit my stand hours if I need to. If I don’t hit those goals I try to forgive myself but really it’s unacceptable. I have a routine – I come in to the office on week days at 8-8:30am and try to get a big chunk of my steps in before work. When someone comes in early, it throws my entire day off and I spend the rest of the day trying to catch up!

A new one is my hair-wash schedule. When I say new, I mean within the last 1-2 years. One day I was talking to my cousin about why her hair always looked so good. She basically said it was because she didn’t wash it very often. As someone who washed their hair daily, I didn’t understand what she was talking about until my hair got super long and then was also getting dry and brittle. I switched over to washing my hair just twice a week and now I know this is just what I do. On Wednesday and Sunday I wash my hair and that’s just that. When I have to wash it because I got super sweaty at the gym or something, it throws my schedule all off. I spend hours recalculating what I should do to get back into my regular schedule and finally just decide that I’ll stick to my regular schedule so it doesn’t mess everything up. Mentally I just have to do it. Wednesday wouldn’t be Wednesday if I didn’t wash my hair.

I feel it when I eat food as well. I’m trying to curb this issue by only making a certain amount of food, but I still find myself finishing off a bag of chips because they’re there and they’re available. If I make a big plate of nachos… I know they won’t reheat well, so I eat them all. I mean, BINGE them all. I started thinking I have a problem for a while there. Maybe I do? I know a lot of people talk about boredom eating so I know I’m not alone in this, but, for instance, it was 8:30pm last night and I wanted to eat something. I made a quesadilla. It was WAY more than I needed but I had the ingredients and it sounded good. That happens a lot.

I think this flows throughout my life. Over time, the longer and longer I’ve been single, the more routine and set in my ways I’ve become and some things have just become compulsive. “Mixing it up” is more of a stress for me. If I can slowly incorporate a new “thing” into my life, I adjust so much more easily.