You could call me an extremist… or obsessive-compulsive… or maybe I just have an addictive personality… or the frequent tendency to go overboard with things I enjoy (but doesn’t everyone?!). Whatever it is-this personality trait, tendency, character flaw, whatever-it makes me do things to the extreme and when I get on a kick with something, it often spirals out of control.
Recently, I picked up Twilight and devoured it, followed by the rest of the series and now I’m reading every vampire series I can get my hands on, which is incredibly random and ridiculous and uncharacteristic for me because I haven’t been interested in fiction since I was a member of the Babysitter’s Club book club in… oh… 4th grade! All of a sudden, I’ve swapped health publication for young adult sci-fi. Weird (not to mention, embarassing!).
In college, I was all about popcorn. I’d eat a bag of popcorn in place of a meal AT LEAST once a day, every day. All I wanted was popcorn! There was a span of time when I was constantly eating frozen broccoli with ketchup. Before I was diagnosed with celiac disease, I would buy loaves of bread, toasting slice after slice after slice. I’ve gone through kicks with Edy’s Slow Churned ice cream, creamsicles, iceberg lettuce salads with salsa, dill pickle spears, oatmeal, lentils-I could go on and on, but you get the picture. I find something that tastes exceptionally good and just can’t get enough of it. I’ll eat it morning, noon and night until one day, I stumble across something new that I simply can’t get enough of.
My extremism is obvious when you look at my eating patterns, but it also plays into my hobbies and mannerisms, such as my current reading kick. In high school, I was all about art, living and breathing for one project after another. I was in the art studio well past school hours and actually developed insomnia because I was so engrossed in my work. And since then, I’ve scarely picked up a sketchpad. I went through a religious phase, an online blogging phase, a gym-rat phase, an earring phase, a cleaning phase (I’m sad that one didn’t stick). I used to chew on my hair (yes, my hair), then my lip, then cracked my knuckles, then my back, and unlike people who have nervous habits of doing those things, for me, I simply stopped out-of-the-blue and quite easily. Again, weird.
I don’t know whether this whatever-you’d-call-it is a “bad” thing or if I should embrace it and look forward to what-in-the-world could possibly come next… but there’s a huge part of me that worries that this extremism prevents me from being well-balanced. More specifically, I worry that running is another one of my short-term obsessions. Currently, I’m signed up to run a half-marathon, followed by two marathons within the next eight weeks and while that’s certainly ENOUGH to focus on (Lord knows I’m barely keeping up with my training as it is!) I STILL find myself constantly searching for races to sign up for. Truthfully, I would LOVE to go sign up for all of them right this very second, but I’m afraid of my husband’s reaction. Even more than that, I’m afraid of burning out, losing interest and consequently, having to add running to the long list of temporary passions that I’ve lived and breathed for 24/7 only to find myself abruptly over it and onto the next thing. Maybe the next thing will be something as wonderful and exciting as running, but I’m skeptical. I don’t want to gamble with what seems to be my truest passion yet. Art, vampire novels, popcorn–those things can phase in and out of my life, but running is so much more important.
Whether or not to sign up for all of the wonderful races that I’m hoping to indulge in this year… After writing this blog, I know the answer SHOULD be no… but I still wanna!!!!!!!!
Maybe just one more…
