Obsession (not by Calvin Klein)

There is, I think, a subtle but cru­cial dif­fer­ence between hav­ing an obses­sion and obsess­ing over things. I can’t quite explain it though, so it’s prob­ably best for me to demon­strate. I hope you’re sit­ting comfortably.

I have always spent far too much time obsess­ing over things. Cur­rently, the only area of life I really obsess over (pos­sibly to my det­ri­ment) is work. I’m not obsessed by it, but I obsess over it, even though I know I shouldn’t. That’s why it was 7.45pm — and cold and dark out­side — when I left a deser­ted office earlier this evening.

Time was, how­ever, when I used to be obsessed by ideas. Stuff. First, there was music. Then there were books. There was theatre, and then — though I don’t care to usu­ally con­fess to it on these pages for fear of attract­ing ridicule — there was even blog­ging. There were also those occa­sional darker epis­odes, usu­ally last­ing a few weeks or months, when I would be over­whelmed by an obses­sion with a par­tic­u­lar per­son. And I bet you never thought you’d hear me admit to that, did you?

These days, how­ever, pos­sibly as a res­ult of being older, wiser, cyn­ical, jaded, occa­sion­ally level-headed and cer­tainly rather more bor­ing, obses­sions are rare. I can’t remem­ber the last time I had one.

So whilst I do want to find a way to stop need­lessly obsess­ing over things, I also want to have an obses­sion again. I want to be obsessed. An obses­sion does some­thing to the bal­ance of my brain: it makes me feel alive. True, an obses­sion with a per­son does some­thing to the bal­ance of my emo­tions too, which is why I might try and avoid becom­ing embroiled in that par­tic­u­lar exper­i­ence once more.

Now my only prob­lem is that I’m not quite sure what I want my new obses­sion to be. Or even if an obses­sion really is a good idea now that I’m (appar­ently) so much more level-headed.