{"id":29,"date":"2004-08-25T16:28:00","date_gmt":"2004-08-25T21:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lawrencem94.sg-host.com\/?p=29"},"modified":"2004-08-25T16:28:00","modified_gmt":"2004-08-25T21:28:00","slug":"order-within-chaos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/plazajen.com\/?p=29","title":{"rendered":"Order within Chaos"},"content":{"rendered":"

To the untrained eye, I look like Chaos. Swirling, piling, heaps of unorganized STUFF. Martha Stewart would shudder indelicately at this Life Lived Untidily.
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However. Within the chaotic storm still lies a deep-seated need for order. A little obsessive-compulsiveness surfaces every so often, much like a bluegill ripples the surface of the water as it eats the bug that has landed in the wrong place at the wrong time.
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I have not done a good job of lunching this week. Today, I did not eat lunch, but instead consumed about 3 handfuls of Chex Mix, followed by an equal amount of mustard-flavored pretzels. Five minutes ago, I just poured a “serving” of Mike-N-Ikes out on my desk. And I was eating them two at a time, which is how I always eat candy at my desk: Gummi bears, Hot Tamales, all the chewy types. I lasted less than a minute, randomly grabbing pairs of bolus-shaped sugar bombs, and then all the flavors had to be sorted. Into like flavor groups, and paired up. The pairs are then eaten, in ascending order, from least-favorite flavor, to most favorite flavor. (each side of the mouth then has a symmetrical, candy-consuming experience.) I am not as obsessed with the M-n-I flavors as I am with gummis, or Starbursts, so it was less of a hierarchical structure to adhere to. Whew! When a certain pairing is off by one, then the odd-candy-out is paired up with the next flavor in the lineup. With M&M’s, they are eaten by least favorite color to prettiest color.
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I do not like juice from my beans to touch my pork chop. I don’t go so far as to have cafeteria trays in my house, but I like things to occupy their own space and not drip into their neighbor’s. It messes with the flavor & expectation for the eating experience.
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I like consistency. I like having a known “base” for my expectations & experiences. There are always things that are uncertain, all these factors over which I have no control. Maybe pairing up my candy & creating some sort of “order” under which the candy is consumed is my effort to control my own universe……… wouldn’t it be great if I challenged some of that energy into a little more cleaning?!?
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Oh, and everyone on my team now thinks I’m utterly insane because I told them that I’m afraid to be around little people because I worry I will be compelled by some unknown force to try & pick them up. This is in the same drawer as the irrational fear that when I am around a police officer, I will lose all control & try to get his (her) gun out of their holster.
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Now THAT<\/em><\/strong> would be spontaneous!<\/p>\n

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To the untrained eye, I look like Chaos. Swirling, piling, heaps of unorganized STUFF. Martha Stewart would shudder indelicately at this Life Lived Untidily. However. Within the chaotic storm still lies a deep-seated need for order. A little obsessive-compulsiveness surfaces every so often, much like a bluegill ripples the surface of the water as it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/plazajen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/plazajen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/plazajen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plazajen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plazajen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/plazajen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/plazajen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plazajen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plazajen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}