Gavin DeGraw – "I Don't Want to Be" (2004)

All I have to do is think of me

And I have peace of mind

(Ur funny!)

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According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – or “DSM-5” – one of the symptoms of obsessive-compulsive personality disorder is “excessive devotion to work and productivity.”

At first blush, that doesn’t seem to apply to me.  I retired from my job several years ago, and I was far from being a workaholic during my working years.  

But the word “work” doesn’t just refer to a job you’re paid to do.  It can also be used to describe any mental or physical effort that is performed to in order to achieve a goal – whether you’re paid a salary for that effort or not.

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Think about the leisure activities that I’ve talked about in the previous posts – e.g., watching TV and movies, reading, collecting coins and sports cards, and playing bar trivia.  

According to one source, those with OCPD “choose hobbies that are organized and structured, and they approach them as a serious task requiring work to perfect.”  

That description certainly applies to hobbies like coin and sports card collecting, which require considerable organization and sustained effort.  But does it apply to watching TV and movies?

It does when you watch TV the way I do.  Before I watch a new streaming series, I read reviews – and when I’m done, I add the series to my list of watched shows.

I also read reviews before choosing a movie, and keep a list of the movies I watch.  But I often follow up one movie with other films by the same director, or from the same historical era – my movie-watching choices are organized and structured.

For example, earlier this year I watched about a dozen examples of French “poetic realism” films from the 1930s and 1940s – movies like The Rules of the Game, Hôtel du Nord, and Children of Paradise.  And I watched them in chronological order.

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My approach to reading is equally systematic.  

I currently have 34 library books in my apartment.  If you don’t believe me, check out this photo:

(Actually, that number is an understatement.  There’s a library book on my bedroom nightstand and another one on my coffee table that I forgot to include in that photo.  Plus I have half a dozen library books on my Kindle.  So the actual count is more like 42 books.)

Those library books were not chosen willy-nilly.  For example, I’m sitting on several collections of short stories by the late Nobel Prize-winning author, Alice Munro.

    

Earlier this year, I read a long New Yorker article about Munro, who chose to stay with her second husband even after she learned that he had sexually abused one of her daughters from her first marriage.  (The abuse began when the daughter was only nine, and continued for several years.)

That article cited a number of Munro’s short stories that featured women who were desperately in love with emotionally unavailable or abusive men.  Like some of her characters, Munro was apparently in thrall to her second husband – despite the extremely disturbing nature of his behavior, she chose to stay with him. 

I was fascinated by that New Yorker article, and decided that I needed to read not only the dozen or so stories it mentioned, but all 163 of Munro’s short stories.  Once I managed to obtain all 14 of her story collections from my library, I started reading them.

Why did I need to have all 14 of Munro’s books before sitting down to read the first one?  Surely you wouldn’t expect me to start reading her first book until I had all of them in my possession.  

What if I got through her first five books and wasn’t able to find her sixth one?  I needed to read them in chronological order – skipping from the fifth story collection to the seventh without reading the sixth one first was not have an option!

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But when it comes to making the case that I have an “excessive devotion to work and productivity,” the most persuasive piece of evidence that I could offer is this wildly successful little blog itself.

I’ve published almost 2200 posts since I gave birth to 2 or 3 lines in November 2009.  (Maybe I should have named it 2 or 3 posts a week because that’s what I’ve averaged over the past 16 years.)

Those 2200 posts contain over two million words!  That’s the equivalent of 20 to 25 average-length books.

So if I had started writing books in 2009 instead of spending all my time on this stupid blog, I could have cranked out two dozen or so books by now?  

I’m not sure if I have OCPD.  But I’m pretty sure I have depression.

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Gavin DeGraw’s 2004 hit, “I Don’t Want to Be,” was used as the theme song for the WB’s teen drama series, One Tree Hill – a show I’ve never watched.

When I watched the official music video for “I Don’t Want to Be,” I was pretty sure that I recognized the actress who portrayed the angsty teenager.  After a little research, I figured out that actress was Shiri Appleby, who was one of the stars of UnREAL, a brilliant series about a Bachelor-type reality show that I watched on Hulu earlier this year.

Shiri Appleby in UnREAL

Click here to watch that official music video.

Click here to buy “I Don’t Want to Be” from Amazon.

Great White – "Once Bitten, Twice Shy" (1989)

My, my, my

I’m once bitten, twice shy, baby

The current edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – “DSM-5” for short – defines obsessive-compulsive personality disorder as “a persistent pattern of preoccupation with order; perfectionism; and control of self, others, and situations.”

One of the specific indications for OCPD that’s listed in the DSM-5 is “reluctance to delegate or work with other people unless those people agree to do things exactly as the patient wants.”

Before retiring a few years ago, I was a partner at a large law firm in Washington, DC.  I was never entirely comfortable delegating tasks to other lawyers at my firm – whenever possible, I preferred to do the job personally.

I remember one particular instance when I assigned one part of a large project to a younger lawyer.  I wasn’t happy about doing that, but I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to get the work done on time if I tried to do everything by myself.

The young associate came to me a few days before the deadline and said that wasn’t going to be able to finish his assignment on a timely basis because of other work commitments.  (Needless to say, I never used that associate again.)

My reluctance to delegate tasks is partly explained by experiences like that one.  When you put someone else in charge of doing something, you take a risk.  If they drop the ball, you can get burned – or bitten (in the words of today’s featured song).

Of course, even if that young lawyer had completed his part of the assignment on time, I probably would have felt the need to rewrite his part of the document we were preparing – not necessarily because what he had written was wrong, but because it wouldn’t have been written in the same way that I would have written it. 

In other words, my reluctance to delegate work to other lawyers resulted not only from my fear of not having control over whether a deadline would be met, but also from my perfectionism – the only person I really trusted to do the job right was me. 

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My need to control “self, others, and situations” wasn’t limited to my work life – it sometimes reared its ugly head during my leisure-time activities . . . like my weekly trivia competitions.

When I started playing trivia, my teammates were the three bartenders at the brewery where the game took place.  Because they were kept pretty busy pouring beer and running credit cards, it made sense for me to write down the answers and take them up to the host.  I always asked for my teammates’ input before deciding how to respond to a question, but it usually fell to me to make the final decision concerning what our answer would be. 

I’ve played on a number of different teams since then.  Most of the time, I’m the guy on the team who writes down the answers and turns them in to the host.  But that doesn’t mean I have control over how we answer – the process of deciding on an answer is a democratic one.  

Not being in control takes a lot of pressure off me.  If an answer turns out to be wrong, it’s not my fault – it’s the team’s mistake.  

And who would want to be on a team with a control freak who insists on making all the decisions?  Even if that person is the smartest player in the room, everyone on the team wants to feel like they are contributing.

The bottom line is that you can’t win at trivia by yourself – you need a diverse group of teammates with complementary expertise.  I have teammates who know a lot more about certain subjects than I do.  If I’m not willing to trust their answers when we have questions concerning those subjects, the team is not going to be successful.

   

One person I used to play with didn’t get that.  He was a very good player, and knew a lot that I didn’t – so we complemented each other well.  But whenever our team members had a difference of opinion concerning what our answer should be, he would get upset if I didn’t turn in the answer he preferred – he took that as a lack of respect for his knowledge.  

I found myself going with his answer more often than not when the team was split on how to respond – not because I necessarily trusted him to know an answer, but because I knew he would get all pissy if we didn’t use his answer and it turned out he was right.  In other words, I was letting my judgment be influenced by the desire to avoid having to deal with his bullsh*t.

He blew up a couple of times when we didn’t go with his answer, and that was that.  I really enjoyed that team, which consisted of an eclectic group of individuals who had come together more or less accidentally.  But he was toxic – he took the fun out of playing.  

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It took a while, but I finally cured myself of the need to be in control at trivia – not only because having one person make all the decisions isn’t the best winning strategy, but also because being part of a successful team is much more enjoyable than being a lone wolf.

But there is one aspect of trivia that I think is best handled by an enlightened despot – at least if that enlightened despot is me.

I’ll explain in the next 2 or 3 lines. 

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Click here to read my 2015 post featuring Great White’s 1989 cover of Ian Hunter’s “Once Bitten, Twice Shy.”  (You’ll give thanks if you do!)

Click here to watch the official music video for “Once Bitten, Twice Shy” – which richly deserves its place on the New York Times “15 Essential Hair Metal Videos” list.

Click here to buy “Once Bitten, Twice Shy” from Amazon.

Cult – "Fire Woman" (1989)

My heart’s a ball of burnin’ flame

Prancing like a cat on a hot tin shack

I have a real problem with procrastination, and it’s gotten worse since I retired.  

I’ve always thought that the reason I have a myriad of unfinished jobs hanging over my head – like dealing with the thousands of family photos that my late parents took over the years – was due to a lack of willpower.  

But I’ve recently learned that many of those who have obsessive-compulsive personality disorder – or “OCPD” – procrastinate because they are perfectionists.  Their perfectionism may be so extreme that it interferes with their ability to complete tasks. 

Some people who come into possession of boxes full of old photographs as a result of the death of their parents might simply toss them.  “What do I need with a bunch of photos taken at our family Christmas celebrations and birthday parties when I have plenty of my own photos from those occasions?” they might ask themselves.  

That’s not me.  My ultimate goal for those photos is to organize them in chronological order and assemble them into comprehensive albums for each of my four children.    

I know that going through those thousands of photos and putting together albums that will satisfy my high standards will take an enormous amount of time and effort.  When I think about what will be required for me to do that job – and to do it right – I feel overwhelmed. 

Which is why those photos are sitting untouched in the boxes that I transported from my parents’ home to my home after my father died in 2016.

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Occasionally, I do manage to finish a project.  For example, a few years ago I made a list of all my LPs and circulated it to several used record dealers in the area.  I ending up holding on to a few of those records purely  for sentimental reasons – I no longer own a turntable – but sold the rest to the highest bidder.

But that’s the exception, not the rule – most of my post-retirement projects remain unfinished.  

In addition to all the family photos, I have thousands of pre-1964 silver coins that my mother and I collected when I was a child.  Those coins are worth something like 35 times their face value as “junk” silver – so each $10 roll of quarters is worth roughly $350.

A lot of people would have already sold those coins to a dealer or pawnbroker a long time ago.  But before I do that, I want to select the coins from each year that are in the best condition and put them in albums to pass on to my grandchildren someday.  

I also need to go through all those dimes, quarters, and half dollars to make sure that there are no coins with scarce dates that are worth more as collectible items than for their silver content.  

For example, I came across a 1932-S quarter when I was a teenager and have held on to it ever since.  It’s worth maybe eight bucks for its silver content, but its value as a scarce collectible coin is more like $100.  I need to be sure there aren’t more such rare quarters lurking in those dozens of rolls of pre-1964 coins before I unload them.

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Another symptom of OCPD is an unwillingness to throw out worn-out or worthless objects, even those with no sentimental value.

My old coins are clearly not worthless, but I’m holding on to a lot of stuff that has no real value to me.

For example, my storage unit contains several large plastic bins full of shirts, sweaters, and pants that I haven’t touched since I rented that unit a couple of years ago.

Before I moved them to that storage unit, most of those clothes hung in closets in my former home for God knows how long.  (I would have preferred to leave them in those closets rather than spending money to rent a storage unit, but the other resident of that house had other ideas.  “You moved out,” she said, “so MOVE OUT!”

Quite a few of those clothing items still fit me fine, and are in good condition – and when it comes to style, they’re not all that different than the clothes I do wear.  So I’m having a hard time getting rid of them, even though I know deep down inside that I will never wear them again.

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My baseball card collection falls somewhere between my coin collection (which is quite valuable) and the clothes in my storage unit (which are essentially worthless to me).

I have gone through the 75,000-odd baseball cards from the seventies, eighties, and nineties that I’ve accumulated over the years, selling perhaps a third of them but unable to find a buyer for the rest.  (I have a feeling that a lot of you with boxes of old baseball cards sitting in your garage or attic are going to be solely disappointed when you try to sell them.  Unless those cards are at least 50 years old, you’ll find that there are a lot more sellers than buyers out there.)    

I always planned to hold on to the complete sets that I assembled back in the day, and at some point I’ll buy the cards necessarily to fill in the gaps in a few near sets as well.  I have eight grandsons, and eventually I’ll pass down those sets to them.  

But that will still leave me with thousands of relatively common cards that no dealer is interested in buying them.  I don’t know what I’ll eventually do with them, but I can tell you that I won’t just throw them away.

While those cards might have little or no monetary value, keeping them isn’t symptomatic of OCPD if they have sentimental value.  

Does it make sense to say that something that you haven’t looked at in years and rarely think about has sentimental value?

It seems like a real stretch to argue that my baseball cards have sentimental value simply because I’ve held on to them all these years.

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I may have only recently realized that the Cult and the Cure weren’t the same band.  

They’re both terrible, but that’s no excuse for my confusing them – because they’re terrible in very different ways.

(Sometimes a picture really is
worth a thousand words)

“Fire Woman,” which was released in 1989, was featured in the Severance episode titled “Sweet Vitriol.”  (Based on the lines quoted at the beginning of this post, I assume that whoever wrote the song’s lyrics was a Tennessee Williams fan.)

Sweet oil of vitriol was the original name of what came to be called ether.  I knew that ether was once a popular surgical anesthetic.  But I didn’t know until I saw the Severance episode that it could be used as a recreational drug.

At 19th century “ether frolics,” people would inhale ether for recreational purposes.  Ether drinking was once popular among Polish peasants, and is still practiced by the Lemkos (an ethnic group whose members live in the region where Poland, Slovakia, and Ukraine meet).

One of the characters in Hunter Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas says that “there is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge.”    

Click here to listen to watch the official music video for “Fire Woman.”  I’m sure there are more insufferable music videos out there, but I can’t think of one right now.

Click here to buy “Fire Woman” from Amazon.