I’m one of those freaks who obsesses over stupid shit. For example, getting the above picture to stay centered and not cause a text-break meltdown took a few days off my life. Does anyone but me care? Probably not. I obsess nonetheless.

Perfectionism: a lovely quality to some, a deadly shortcoming for others.

My clients love my attention to detail. They love that they can call me and say “I want the white thingy around my photo to be bigger,” and not only do I know what they mean, but it becomes a personal heart-mission. If I can’t fix it, it will drive me crazy. I will stay up all night and enlist the help of a small army of gurus if that’s what it takes to make the blog post not look like crap.

The trouble comes around 3 a.m., when I realize I’ve spent five hours obsessing about petty things — not just for my clients’ projects but for my own. Add 47 OCD “emergencies” to the roster, and I’m a day behind in jobs. I then become a procrastination whore on a mission to avoid my backlog at all cost. Caffeinated to the max, I sling my superhero cape aside and don a new costume: Idiot Girl.

Idiot Girl has no worries. She cares not that the Inbox spilleth over and that deadlines loometh. She is able to scale tall cities of blogs and message boards, and she has no censor button. She is wild and free. She leaves the grim prognosis of reality in her dust.

The next morning, all worlds crumble. Lost in the rubble of my own making, I ask myself Why? In the silence, a little voice whispers, “Take an hour off once in a while, and maybe you wouldn’t be such a moron.” (This isn’t a kind voice. She tells it like it is.)

So today, although I feel like I should be working, I am not. I will curl up in my warm cozy bed, turn the ringer off the phone, and ignore all emails that require any sort of thought process or action. I hope that tomorrow I will be more productive for it. And if not, I will blame schizophrenia.