Since writing yesterday’s post, I can’t stop thinking of more things I have to “finish.”
In middle school, I really wanted to quit Girl Scouts. At the time, I just didn’t like it. But I couldn’t bear to quit –what if I miss out on something? By high school, I was glad I hadn’t quit, but there were a couple years where I slogged through it. Over the years, there have been several other things I’ve wanted to quit, but couldn’t.
I also keep watching TV shows I don’t like, because I figure I’ve put in enough time watching it so far, I might as well keep watching it and see if it gets better. I don’t want to someday see a promo for a new episode, think it looks good and be mad at myself for dropping the show. I’ve actually gotten better about this one since having Meg, since I have less time to watch TV. I had to drop some shows and it was actually freeing! It felt great to stop watching shows I wasn’t getting anything out of.
I also read every page of magazines before recycling them. My favorite magazine is Marie Claire. I get excited every month when it arrives. I slog through some of the features at the beginning of the magazine that I care about, so I can get to the articles, which I DO like. In most magazines, the articles are the only part I really like. The other stuff is okay, but if I really think about it, for me, they’re not worth the time it takes to read them. But I read them anyway. I can’t NOT read them. What if I miss out on some great tip?
Writing it all out like that makes it look like I have some form of OCD. Maybe I do. But it’s not so much that I have a compulsive need to finish everything, it’s more that I have a fear of missing out on something. I hate feeling left out, so I do everything I can to not miss out. Although, I guess sometimes it is just a need to finish something, because how can I miss something by skipping an episode of Friends I’ve already seen twenty or thirty times?
I think I do the same thing w/ TV shows - I dragged myself through a few boring/awful long-term storylines on some of my previously favorite shows hoping that it would get better and knowing that if I quit watching, I'll miss some okay stuff and regret it later when I see a preview about something I do want to see. One of my current struggles w/ this is that my husband doesn't like all the same shows as me and my TV time is limited to when he's around, for the most part, so I try and only watch shows we both enjoy. This means that I have stopped watching Private Practice, Grey's Anatomy, and Life UnExpected in the last year, since he isn't into them. I sometimes see a preview or read an article about them that make me want to go back and view, but I am SO far behind that I give up.
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