I have this incredible ability to do things repetitively/obsessively. It sounds like a problem, but I promise it's not.
It's things like being able to eat the same lunch every day for a week. My tastebuds do not get bored, and I do not stop craving whatever it is I made too much of at the beginning of the week.
In reading Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant, that book on cooking and eating alone, I've become more assured that this isn't bizarre behavior. Many of the essays in that book involved confessions of what a person ate every day for {insert absurd amount of time here, such as six months}.
Left to our own devices, we crave routine and familiarity. Is that because we want to feel not alone and so we create a continuity of our own?
I don't know; I just know that I could eat a fried egg sandwich every night and still get excited for that first bite.
Or it's my ability to listen to one CD—or heck, even one song—over and over, always coming back with the same freshness, the same feeling that this is a power song for me.
I should not admit how many times I've listened to "Belle" from Beauty and the Beast. It's on my Broadway playlist on Grooveshark, and that's the third thing I do every morning at work.
Step 1: Put lunch in fridge. Most likely, it's the same thing as yesterday.
Step 2: Look at email. Ignore pressing things for just a few more minutes.
Step 3: Start pretending I'm on Broadway. Let's start with..."Belle."
So I am a creature of obsessive habit, something I've been reminded of in two ways recently.
Way the First: This week, my friends Brenda and Beth brought back into my life the Rufus Wainwright song "Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk."
It's on a CD that Brenda made for me a few years back, so technically, the song never left my life; I just haven't listened to it in awhile.
Hearing it again, I remembered how I laughed when I first heard it. Brenda has this slightly/very unnerving ability to choose songs that speak to that part of you that you don't speak much about.
It's freaky, actually, listening to songs that make you wonder if she somehow broke into your journal, even though she lives in a different state. {And you don't have a lock on your journal, so maybe "broke in" isn't the right phrase.}
This particular Rufus Wainwright song hits me here: I, at times, have very little willpower. Mostly this is when faced with Oreos or some other cookie. So these lyrics—oh, how I relate to these lyrics:
Cigarettes and chocolate milk
These are just a couple of my cravings
Everything, it seems, I like's a little bit stronger
A little bit thicker, a little bit harmful for me
If I should buy jellybeans
Have to eat them all in just one sitting
Everything, it seems, I like's a little bit sweeter
A little bit fatter, a little bit harmful for me
What was that old Pringles ad? "Once you pop, you can't stop"? Yeah, that's me and Oreos, which is why I don't normally keep them around. A little bit fatter, a little bit sweeter, a little bit harmful for me—in massive quantities.
No amount of running can help you avoid the weight gain from eating a package of Oreos a day. Not that I do that.
Way the Second: Did you read about me and Downton Abbey? You probably should. Slightly obsessed, yes.
What's the point of all this confession? Honestly, I'm not sure.
Do I want you to buy me Oreos or talk about Downton Abbey—all in an effort to test my will power? No, and that just sounds cruel and mean-spirited.
Do I want to be Belle? Yes, but that's beside the point.
Do I want to hear that I'm not alone in my very focused behavior? Maybe, just maybe.
Star Trek and Downton Abbey.
I am not suggesting a mash-up of those two—a la Pride and Prejudice and Zombies—although I'm sure someone has thought of that. Somewhere on the vast distraction that is the Internet, Captain Jean-Luc Picard is sitting down to dinner in an Edwardian dining room as Carson the butler holds out his chair.
If you didn't get any of those references, that's all right. You don't really need to in order to understand what I'm about to say. {If you did get them, we speak the same nerdy language, and to you, I say: hello, dear friend.}
I'm connecting these two shows because of my own confession: I am a fanfic girl.
I have never admitted this before so boldly {even using bold typeface!}, and I feel both relieved and exposed {and if one of you comments about how you're a fanfic girl/boy, I will feel comforted and supported, too}.
Facfic—fan fiction—is when you take already-existing characters from a TV show or a book or a movie and imagine future adventures or more of a backstory or missing scenes for them.
Essentially, you so immerse yourself in this other world that you want more of it. Need more of it. Want to, perhaps, be part of it.
And so you turn to fanfic.
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Here's the deal: I've just finished re-watching Downton Abbey. I watched it for the first time back in January on PBS, and while I loved it {and even made my sister watch it when I was visiting her in LA}, when the season ended, I moved on. On into February and away from Lady Mary and Matthew and all the rest of them.
Until recently. My friend Brenda was watching it for the first time, and one day, she mentioned a little something about it.
A little something that propelled me into immediately switching my Netflix queue so that I could re-watch Downton.
Seriously, from the effect it had on me, you'd think Brenda was some sort of PBS/iTVsorceress, casting spells with a wave of a crooked finger—spells that make you forget all about other plans and real-life friends and your pug.
Just watch the period piece. Escape, escape.
And so I did. That part of my brain that allows me to completely immerse in what I'm doing to the point of repetition {be it reading all the Anne of Green Gables books or eating eggplant every night for dinner} was flipped on, and the rest of my brain was filled with Downton, much to my slight surprise and consternation.
You may have noticed Downton creeping in to my writing.
I talked about having a lady's maid and getting my hair styled every day.
I've mentioned English country dances, and there has been a decided bent of nostalgia in my writing of late.
In the same way that I imagined I was a princess when I was younger, I found my mind wandering to what my life would've been like if I had been born an aristocrat.
I wasn't born an aristocrat; I was born in Iowa to very good people but certainly no earl or countess. But here I was, reverting to a reverie-bound 12-year-old about something that was clearly not my life.
The turns my mind takes completely take me by surprise at times. I was daydreaming! About a TV show!
Having an active imagination is one thing, a good thing, but even I was surprised by my imagination's activity.
Now, all this makes it sound like I think you should grow out of imagination or out of losing yourself in a story. Of course I don't think that; the ability to lose ourselves in stories is partly what keeps us empathetic, I think, to what other people go through.
But I knew that this particular story had a strong hold on me when I found myself reading Downton Abbey fanfic.
My girly little heart wanted to believe that Lady Mary and Matthew would end up together. And my romantic self wanted to know more about their relationship, how it developed, what they were thinking.
Enter fanfic, which I started to devour, staying up very much past my bedtime to read what other people—people who were just as invested as I was in these other people's lives—had written.
11:30 and I wasn't in bed: I was on Chapter 10 of a Mary/Matthew story.
I was, at first, surprised at how easily I found Downton fanfic and how hard it was for me to stop reading, even when some of it wasn't all that well written {I have a low tolerance, usually, for poorly written stories where the characters say all the obvious things and no one seems all that real}.
But then I remembered Imzadi. It's this Star Trek novel written about the relationship between Will Riker and Deanna Troi {you know, from The Next Generation}. I read it when I was in middle school, and it gave me more of what I craved from the TV show: more details about why they fell in love and fiery interactions they had and headstrong decisions they both made.
{You may have noticed a theme to my fanfic interests: mushy love stories. Actually, I hope you noticed that because it's pretty obvious.}
On about Day 3 of reading Downton fanfic, I realized that I've been a fanfic girl for years. Ever since I first read Imzadi.
It was like I'd come full circle with a little sliver of my nerdy self. I suddenly didn't feel so guilty for my flights of fancy, imagination-wise. I was just being true to myself, my little fanfic girl self.
