I Look Around But It's You I Can't Replace, I Feel So Cold And I Long For Your Embrace, I Keep Crying Baby, Baby, Please

--"Every Breath You Take", The Police

I got my first computer in 1995.

It's been downhill ever since. LOL

Not that I didn't know it about myself already, but the fact I'm writing this from the local Panera only confirms that I have an obsessive personality. I came home today to find a huge technical error awaiting me on my PC's DSL connection. Instead of waiting it out like most sane people would have, instead of giving more than a cursory call to the Help line, I immediately packed my Macbook up and hightailed it to Panera. I didn't even wait. I didn't even stop to consider my options. I just went.

I may be taking after Breanne just yet.

I didn't have anything pressing. It isn't like I had some important research paper to do or some compelling idea for my latest novel. Nope, the most pressing goal I had on my agenda today was to write this very post. Everything else was fodder. Stuff like getting a couple of more games of Urban Rivals in, like checking on my Fantasy Baseball League, like checking out the Rilo Kiley forum, don't exactly have the weight of the world attached to them. Granted, I think everybody gets a little antsy if they aren't able to check their e-mail for a period of twenty-four hours, which would be the case for me if the DSL doesn't start up before tomorrow, but I take frustration to a whole new level. I have a routine. I like my routine. My routine dictates that I write posts like these every few days, check my mail everyday, and on a instinctual level be able to roam the hills and dales of the Internet at my leisure. When that freedom is denied me, I take drastic measures like driving five miles out of my way to compose a post about why I have to compose posts at the local coffee shop/bakery.

I've always been this way. What changes is the what I'm obsessed about. What's different is the goal I choose to act impulsively in regards to. Be it driving thirty miles out of my way to go eat at the local Sonic Burger or walking home from Dan's house, if there's something I've made up my mind to do or to get, I have to do it. Now, it isn't the same brand of impulsiveness as Lucy. I don't set these long-term goals that I strive for and woe betide anything or anyone that gets in my way. I usually act impulsively to the more innocuous of pursuits. A hamburger here, a video game there--hell, I've even managed to drive eighty miles just to deliver a letter to a friend simply because I promised I would and not because it would have made an iota of difference if it had been a day or two late. What's peculiar is that I'm usually lax when it comes to the big things. I'm pretty even keel about a great many topics that most people take deadly seriously. I couldn't give a rat's ass about other people's priorities.

Where my individuality shines are, in fact, those pursuits I do overreact to. Like I said, I'm sure most people would feel the loss of being able to log onto the Internet for one day. I, however, will go extremely out of my way to insure that my day-to-day cycle of sites I check, posts I write, and/or people I catch up with doesn't vary--even if for only one day.

Or maybe I'm just like Toby--she has her idiosyncrasies that she must enact every time she partakes in a certain activity.

Whatever it is, I'm too old to change now. Posts need to be written when I think they need to be written--not when people actually want them, mind you. My Fantasy Baseball team isn't going to manage itself. And, for chrissakes, there's a lot of Rilo Kiley news I'm missing as we speak.

Go a day without being able to surf the web?

I'd sooner starve.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers