An Unhealthy Obsession?

I'll be the first to admit that I have an addictive personality. Luckily it has never manifested itself in anything more serious than Diet Coke (six 20-ounce bottles a day at the height of my addiction, junior and senior years of college which, yes, is pretty much a constant stream, like I could have just hooked up an IV drip of the stuff and been done with it), and a brief brush with smoking in high school (Marlboro Lights) and college (Camel Lights). Although it never really suited me, and as much as I tried, as much as I was drawn to the image of being a smoker, or a writer-who-smoked, as cool as I thought it was to be up all night in the living room of my dorm-suite with one dim light flickering overhead, hunched over my keyboard frantically typing a paper comparing and contrasting "Women in Love" and "To the Lighthouse" for an English professor who had apparently been using the same lecture note cards for the entirety of his (exceedingly long) tenure, and which were consequently yellowing and fragile, and on the verge of actual disintegration, Camel light in one hand, Diet Coke (20-ounce bottle) in the other, as I ashed into an empty Diet Coke (can) than I had sucked down between bottles, I could never fully pull it off, I could never really look like a smoker. And to my great dismay, every time I awkwardly lit up, someone (a boss at the restaurant I worked at for eight days (I used to find it challenging, and confining, if not flat-out suffocating, to hold down a job for any extent of time, by which I mean more than three weeks), a classmate, a boy I had a crush on) would inevitably say: "Jen, you smoke?" and I was outed as the social trying-to-be-cool-pseudo-smoker that I really was.

Oh, and speaking of addictions, I want to be honest, and put everything, all my cards and whatnot, out on the table, to be a reliable narrator, you know, so I feel I should mention my Starbucks addiction (which I've already touched upon, ever-so-delicately) here, at this juncture. Although you may not know that extent of that yet, some things are best kept a mystery, to be slowly revealed over time, and I'm sure it will all surface eventually, as with most addictions of its scope, it can't not.

So we've established my predilection towards the extreme. What happened yesterday was that I was at a very lovely lunch when suddenly, I sort of mentally checked-out and started to think of things I wanted to write on my blog. One minute I was ummm-ummmm-ummmmmm enjoying what was possibly the best lobster roll of my life, and the next my mind was racing and my blog was like an illicit lover that I couldn't wait to run home to rendez-vous with, just rush into the passionate embrace of its arms, my keyboard. At which point I realized I had been mute for about 7-10 minutes, which, if you know me, NEVER HAPPENS. Not even with the best of the best of lobster rolls.

When my very-lovely-lunch-companion sojourned to the restroom, I frantically groped for my notebook and passionately began scrawling my ideas messily across its luscious lined pages (see July 1st post: "thoughts...fast...furious"), and then, just as quickly as it had begun, I threw the notebook back into my tote before I was discovered. When my companion returned and we continued our conversation (now that I had gotten all of that out, I was again able to focus on the conversation-at-hand), I looked down to see the evidence of my infidelity: my telltale pen, lying there, exposed, between my water glass and the bread basket. I discreetly fondled it and swept it back with its companion, my spiral notebook.

What is the moral of this story? While I can see that my blog can serve as a positive outlet for my creativity, I also see its destructive potential. Will I lose all my social skills and start blogging like how I drank Diet Coke in the late 90's? What will become of the me that likes to fill every moment of conversation with the melodious tones of my own voice??? Where will that Jen go? Off to some anti-social cyberspace-y Blog Land? Will I become a blog-o-holic and lose my abilities to eat, sleep, hold down a job (by the way, I have gotten much better at this as of late), and above all, engage in healthy, possibly even interactive, conversation, and partake in my all-time favorite pastime of TALKING?

And I am left what I am always left with: as with everything, from Diet Coke, to Starbucks, to blogging, the key is, it must be, BALANCE (it always is! Except in the case of smoking, where the key is clearly, it is bad for you, so don't do it at all).

As always, xoxo,

Jen G.

P.S. I promise to stop obsessing about how many views my blog has gotten VERY SOON. As soon as the novelty wears off. I promise...