OCD Sewing and Working

Or "The Japanese Tea Ceremony a warning from history".

OCD or Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is a strange condition. Much like schizophrenia and amnesia it is rarely fully understood by people. When I was growing up we thought schizophrenia meant you had two people in one head (in other words Multiple Personality Disorder), and amnesia was always a case of forgetting your past (whilst not knowing that Retro Grade amnesia, the inability to make new memories also exists)

Obsessiveness Compressive Disorder is often (but not always) a lot more than being a "Clean Freak". It isn't entirely about being trapped into performing rituals, however this is something I wanted to blog about today.

Legend has it that years ago a samurai had the PERFECT cup of tea in a tea house. The tea was at just the right temperature,  the bird song and crickets sounded just right, the lady serving the te
a moved in just the right elegant way. In short EVERYTHING just fell into place.  He wanted to recreate this feeling every time he had a cup of tea, and so the tea ceremony was born. His serving lady had to move in the same way, the tea had to be the same temperature and so on. However this will not always recreate the same moment of bliss as many things are beyond our control. The temperature and humidity of the tea house, the background noise, his thoughts from earlier in that day. By insisting so much remain unchanged he had stifled the universes ability for random chance to effect the end result, So from that moment on no cup of tea he had would be as good, and could never be as it had become a regimented  unchanging ritual.

I have no idea how factual accurate the above tale is, however I think it can still teach us something. Having everything "just so" when we work is fine to a point. A tidy work space, knowing where everything we want like our sewing tools are and so on can speed up sewing and make it more of pleasure.  My trouble is when I can't find "MY SEWING MUG" or can't decide on the best DVD to watch. Then I become distracted, my work suffers, assuming I ever get round to starting it instead of picking through DVD's or hunting an errant Tardis mug

I guess what I'm trying to say is it's great to be organised, and it's great to have things around us that make work a pleasure but be open to change, it will happen whether you like it or not one day. Mug's break, DVD's get damaged and then you'll have to work with a new mug, and maybe listening to the radio, and who knows you may find this even more enjoyable that your old routine.