The Obsession with Writing Things Down

Welp, it's the weekend. Yuppers. I always get so excited, and then don't know what to do with myself. ...Then, by the time it's over I'm wondering where the time went.

I have a confession. I obsessively write things down. I think the whole thing started out with writing down my spending habits. I decided when starting college I would write down every item I would spend money on. Alright, maybe it started out with getting my debit card earlier that summer because I wanted to make sure I always knew how much I had in my account. I've heard the horror stories. Okay, I'm getting a bit distracted but know that it all started out with finances.

This thing has fallen into a river, and I still use it.

At this point, I was starting to become much more neurotic. I was (or at least student loans were) paying for this education, so I had to make sure I knew when things were due and when to get them done. Thankfully, that was taken care of with the new free planner that my school gave me. (Nice thing about smaller schools? They give you free planners. Yeah, not so much here.) If you're counting, there's currently two places where I'm writing things down.

My next planning resource came to me from Christmas. I had received a little notebook from my cousin for a Secret Santa gift. I mentioned it a bit here. I thought like most of the notebooks I have, I would start filling it out and forget about it in ten pages. I now have about ten pages left in it. I've written a lot of things in that little notebook, including:

• Information about transferring, studying abroad, and requirements for them.
• Class schedules, percentages, big assignments
• To do lists of all kinds, including some grocery lists
• Spending habits, overall money situations
• Meal planning
• Outfits I wore
• Running schedules
• Potential dream jobs, dream travel destinations, dream whatevers.

Yeah, I've used it a lot.

Recently, I've grabbed another little composition book (similar to my spending one) for scheduling the hours of the day. As in,writing down times when I have things going on so I can figure out things around it. Not like I don't have a planner, but it gives me more of a visual of the hours.

Finally, there's the OCD pages. This habit started in fall of 2010, and it involves notebook paper. Y'see, sometimes I like to add random things up. Multiple times. Like the estimated cost of studying abroad. Or scheduling classes for my college career. Be warned, you are about to see some A Beautiful Mind type craziness out of me:

Yeah. I've written on dozens of papers like this. Looking at it yourself, you probably wouldn't know what all of the calculations were. Hell, I hardly do. That's why I've written some of them over and over, because I forget which is which.
I'll admit, this is probably a bit insane. Whatever, it's how I do.

If you were counting, that's five separate things that I write in/on. I'm starting to see a little more crazy in me. Concerning.

"Wouldn't you be more organized if you wrote everything down in one area?" You'd think, but I don't believe so. Each thing has its own meaning, its own reason. The rest of my random thoughts go in the big notebook, and I carry all of these around with me 90% of the time. It may be a bit crazy, but I like it.

That's all from me tonight. Hopefully I haven't scared anyone off.

Are you an obsessive list maker? Do you write a lot of things down?