And the day hand on the Great Clock goes CLACK once more.

I really need to work on my relationship with time.

I recently brought up how I am always checking the time and mentally mapping out blocks of time and honestly somewhat obsessed with time in therapy, and my therapist immediately latched onto it.

Not hard to see why. So far, he had only ever seen my soggily sad side and some of my anger. His picture of me, presumably, was entirely that of your usual dead-inside apathetic depressive slob.

And that was a perfectly adequate picture. Up to a point. But it was not the full picture by any means.

And I don’t blame him for that, because until recently, I had no idea how chock full of compulsions and obsessions I was either.

I had the same view as my shrink. I thought I was the opposite of the obsessive “type”, being the total slob that I am, and therefore never suspected myself of harboring OCD type issues.

But now that I have turned myself on to them (yay, the Seventies speak!), I am getting a pretty good picture of them, and there are many.

The time thing is the latest one to attract my attention. (See, I got back to the topic! And all by myself!).

To recap : For as long as I can remember – at least since I got my first watch – I have obsessed over time. I am always looking at the clock and mentally scheduling my time, deciding when I will do (or stop doing) X based on when I will be doing Y, with Y being some fixed-time event like an appointment or hanging with my friends.

It is not optional. If I tried to stop I would immediately panic because suddenly I have no idea when to do anything or what to do with mself and it would be like being suddenly struck blind.

Why do I do it? It’s a way for me to exert control over my life and feel like I could anticipate problems and dodge or deal with them. As long as I know what time it is, I can reduce the chaos of a million open doors all clamoring at me down to a nice, simple progression of time.

This, then this, then this, then this. That I can handle.

But all depressives are victims of their own coping mechanisms because we rely far too heavily on them and turn them into something awful.

In this case, the effects are relatively minor. I fret and obsess and I would probably benefit from taking a more relaxed, Mediterranean attitude towards time and the clock.

Things will happen when they need to happen, type thing.

But it keeps part of my mind busy fussing with something and that might be good for me in the long wrong, as when that particular part of my mind is busy it tends to pick itself apart.

The real compulsion part of the OCD tag team is the feeling of compulsion that attaches to the plans I make.

And that is pure madness. There is no dodging that fact. There is no rational reason why it would feel like doing something other than what I have planned will make something really horrible happen.

No horrible thing in particular, mind you. It is pure dread. It makes me feel like the world is being occluded by a dark miasma, like there is thick black smoke over everything, and the only way to get back to normal is to give in and go back to doing the planned thing.

So far, I am calling it compulsion dread, but that name sucks sweaty donkey taint (but in a BAD way) , so I am open to suggestions.

Then there is another kind of temporal dread : fear of the future, and the feeling like I am always running out of time.

My recent triumph in realizing that I felt like I was never doing whatever it was that I am supposed to be doing was a big breakthrough, but now I worry about making it stick because I have nothing to replace it with.

So I can feel my mind slowly oozing back into that kind of thinking rather than facing the task of actually figuring out what to do with my life.

That whole setup – hating myself for not doing whatever it is I am supposed to be doing and burying myself in my distractions to escape that burden – kind of kept me busy like…. all of the time.

Without it, I have to face that hallways of infinite doors once more. It’s one of my greatest fears. So many possibilities, how do I choose? How do I figure out which door is the “right” one?

“There’s no ‘right’ one. But you know what’s always wrong? Doing nothing. ”

I know, I know. But that doesn’t solve the problem. I still feel like I am paralyzed in the middle of a crosswalk, knowing I have to get out of there before I get run over but unable to decide which way to go.

The only solution I can think of is quite indirect : it is to continue to try to beef up my connection to my id and the life force it can bring, and hope that by doing so, I will develop my “evil Kirk” side and become more decisive.

Said id hookup is still quite weak. It’s just a teeny little fire smaller than a burning match-head right now, and I have to protect it and feed it so that it can grow and intensify.

And it’s honestly going to stay that way unless I can get over the feeling that doing something for purely emotional reasons is chaos and madness and keep on insisting that everything be analyzed, labeled, dissected, broken down into its most basic components, and then, now safely and very dead, finally stored somewhere and forgotten.

That’s not living. The soul needs light and love and joy and sadness and all kind of uncontrolled, unpredictable emotions that make life worth living and give life its color and flavour.

My overpowered high beams brainiac brain cannot provide that. All it can offer is cold comfort and colorful distractions.

And that’s just plain not enough.

My soul is starving.

And I need to learn how to feed it.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.