Heather Christena Schmidt

Not Obsession, like the Calvin Klein one (or whateverthehell is the maker of it). Obsessive. As in I can be a little bit obsessive, and about a lot of things. I realized that this evening as I was rolling and hot glueing crepe paper rings around napkins for a party I am throwing in a couple of weeks.

As I grow older, I think it gets worse too. I used to have a friend that was super-obsessive. If she called you and you didn’t call back in 15 minutes, you’d get a text and an email. And if you didn’t respond to that, she’d call you again. Then she’d ask if you were mad at her. Obsessive. Anyway, she was in her thirties when I was friends with her, and now I’m seeing myself becoming more and more like her as I near 31. Of course I’ll never do the whole email/text/”are you mad at me?” thing, but I most certainly do a lot of other things she did.

And more.

#1 Everything Has To Be Perfect

My obsessive attention to detail and perfection has gotten so out of control at this point that sometimes I worry that people will notice a scrap of dust on the bottom of a table, or on the lining inside the leg of a chair. I worry about people noticing the floorboards not being clean enough; or about things being off-center too.

Then there are times when I am organizing an event or throwing a party. Everything has to be perfect, down to the very last detail. Even the napkins have to be organized and planned, and the colors have to go well too. Can’t have unmatched plates or an unpalatable color scheme!

Makes you want to puke, doesn’t it?

#2 Scents I Really Love

I really enjoy good scents. But it isn’t as simple as liking to wear nice-smelling body spray, or using hand creams that have a fragrant aroma. Oh sure, I love me my Bath and Body Works seasonal lines. Every Winter I stand in line to buy 70 tubs of Winter Candy Apple hand cream; every Fall I do the same for an equal number of Vanilla Pumpkin body sprays. But it goes beyond your typical girly-clean-nice smells everyone typically enjoys; I enjoy a number of aromas, some to a point many would call obsessive.

For example, I really like using my glue gun because the smell of hot glue is like crack-cocaine to me. And nothing beats the scent of a freshly opened canister of Play-doh.

Weird, huh?

#3 Why Things Happen

I suppose this is the Philosopher left in me: I am so obsessive over why things happen, it’s probably bordering on unhealthy at this point. Now that I’m not an academic anymore, though, I suppose I just look for reasons in everything, as I was trained to do.

Only now, it’s just in the everyday, mundane stuff. Like why my leg is itching so much. Or why no one RSVPs for parties anymore. I just got hot glue on my finger and it didn’t burn – is my skin hardening? It borders on paranoid sometimes, though: why did my mom ask me to come over to my grandma’s Thursday instead of Wednesday? And so on.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not – like – sitting in a corner obsessively going over all these stupid things. I just notice them creeping up more and more in my daily life. Some might say I have too much time on my hands. Who the shit has time to worry about dust on the inside of the leg of a chair? Others might argue it’s a coping mechanism – the more I think about stupid things, like napkin colors and RSVPs, the less I have to think about the bigger things going on.

Then again, I may just be crazy. I’m leaning towards that one. Do you? Or are you just as obsessive as me?