History is shaped by our hands.

Am I obsessive compulsive? I think I have some compulsive tendencies. When I was younger, I did some odd stuff. It was about the time I was in high school, though I don't think high school had anything to do with it. For example... If I tapped my fingers on my desk with my right hand, I had to do it with my left hand as well. By doing this with both the right and left sides of my body, everything was in balance. But that wasn't it. I had to do it four times. I think its because most music basically has beats in groups of four. Four felt safe and complete. If for some reason four didn't seem like enough, I had to go to ten. Ten was nearly the perfect number. Counting is base ten. Our monetary system is base ten. And the incredibly simplistic but America-shunned Metric system is base ten. Ahhhh... ten is so nice.

As I've gotten older, I think my compulsive tendencies have morphed into traits that are more manageable. Now my compulsiveness is just that I throw myself more than 100% into anything that I do, blocking out or avoiding everything else in the process. When I go to visit chilly and nomad for a weekend, its best to not expect much out of me for a few days. I totally engross myself in their company and whatever plans we have. I may check my e-mail during that time, but I rarely respond. I may pop around and read all the blogs that I love to read, but I won't write in my own. Do I have time to? Of course I do. But I don't think I do because I'm so obsessed with everything else we are doing.

This new video game Final Fantasy XI is another example of my compulsiveness taking over. This game is huge, its massive, and its extremely addicting. It is designed to prey off of your compulsiveness. And damn, did they do a good job with that. Even though I didn't play it for one minute during last week's work week, I was thinking about it constantly. Even when I physically can't play it, I am playing it in my head. I'm planning out what quests I'm going to do next. I'm thinking about what I should do to try and get some money for that new set of armor that I want. Its pathetic, yet so beautiful.

And now I have yet something else to obsess over, but hopefully this will pass in the next 48 hours. On the way back from a movie yesterday, chilly, nomad, and I started talking about conspiracies, among many other things. Nomad mentioned how she now wants to pick up The X-Files seasons on DVD. Now I want to, also. I loved that show. I obsessed over it nicely in the mid-90s (thanks to chilly, ironically). But if I were to go out and buy all of these seasons, it would cost me $900 + tax! Sure, I could hunt down used copies one at a time and probably only pay $50 a month and save over $450. But that's not compulsive enough. I need to give my 100% and that requires purchasing all of them at the same time, not to mention getting the video game or something else X-Files related to get beyond the 100% and into 110% territory. I did it when I bought every single Friday the 13th movie in one batch. I smartly signed up to a DVD club and got most of those as my initial selections to ease the cost of that obsessive compulsive binge. I'll have to check the possibility of doing something like that with The X-Files seasons.

If you take someone (me) that is compulsive and gives 100% towards something and combine this person with something (FFXI) that is designed to be addictive and take 100% of your time, then things get crazy. The game wants 100% of my free time. Well, I'm obsessive compulsive. I can't give 100% because that's what it expects. I have to give 150%!

To illustrate my point, the whole time I've been writing this I've been thinking about my journey back to West Sarutabaruta to defeat Tom Tit Tat and get the Tropical Punches.