i am neurotic.

I have to have exactly 24 Black Warrior pencils in the pencil cup on my desk, and they all must face me so that I can read the writing on them. I also have a separate cup just for Uni-ball signo pens, of which there must be ten, and all of which must have the capped end pointing down.

I have to use ballpoint or gel roller ink–highly preferring black. It has to be either Fine or Extra Fine tip. I cannot and will not write with a regular pen(those pens that fade in and out every millimeter). I haven’t used a regular pen in years.

I have this obsessive fear that I’m going to be at work and not have enough snack food and I’ll be starving during the day. So, every morning I take a bunch of snacks to work – usually the same variety of things (orange, yogurt cup, granola bar, cheez-its, etc). I never actually eat all of these snacks, they just compound in my desk drawer. …and even though I know I have plenty of snacks already at work, I can’t leave in the morning without my collection of snacks “just in case I get hungry.”

I didn’t realize I was doing it, but my coworkers pointed out that whenever I would put something up on my cube wall with push-pins, I would select (from the multi-colored box) all one color for each paper I put up. And, I had set colors for types of papers (yellow for planning, green for personal pictures, etc). They thought it was funny to switch the push-pins. I HAD to change them back. I’m so sad they know this.

I have this big fear of forgetting things. I constantly use post-its to write down little lists of things i have to do, things i need to get, music i want to download, or even things that interest me. I can never have any of these same things on the same post-it and every list has to be a different color. Needless to say, I own a lot of post-its and my planner is filled with them.

For as long as I can remember; whenever I’ve used a staple remover I’ve imagined it to be a very small shark, hungry for staples and make a “homer like” chomping sound at the moment of staple removal.

When ever i’m doing busy work or some boring task i sing/hum the same song “why can’t we be friends, why can’t we be friends…” and i realized this has been going on for over ten years now. I don’t even care for that song.

When i staple my papers i always have to do it 3 times. I feel that if i don’t do this then my staple will fall off and my papers get separated but this way if one staple falls off i still have 2 more to hold the papers together and keep them from getting separated. I’m a sophomore in college and Ive been doing this since i was in 8th grade.

When I’m at work and it gets to the final hour, the song lyric “it’s the final countdown!” pops into my head. It does this on the last hour, the last 30 mins, the last 15 minutes and the last 5 minutes.

Ever since reading an article that revealed Scotch tape emits x-rays when pulled off of the roll or a window, my fingers feel hot whenever I tear off a piece of tape, as though an x-ray has been taken of my fingers.  I now blow on them to cool them off.  This is becoming an inconvenience, as my job requires using Scotch tape on a regular basis.