I have been sitting each evening meditating as I had promised myself and it sort of sucks. 

I long abandoned the morning attempts as my life comes roaring into action from the moment I open my eyes, between getting ready, packing lunch, wrangling a snoozyheaded 12 year old, getting him out the door and spending an enormous amount of time trying to find my badge to get into my office.

I'm not sure what I had hoped meditating would do for me but it's not really doing anything ... it's nice to sit ... it's nice to have a few moments of time for myself but the reality is, all I have is time to myself.  I'm just tinkering and doing things in those other moments - it's still just me.

I have no more peace in my mind than when I started this journey.  While I wasn't sure what to expect, I did expect something.  Anything really.

I have OCD - I have the kind of OCD that is very symmetry and order based - outside of cleaning my house and organizing I don't have many outward manifestations of OCD.  I don't have rituals, I don't have many compulsive behaviors like doing things a certain number of times, etc.  However, when super stressed, I run through prime numbers in my head until I'm back in black.

On the upside, I think insurance companies should hire me as the SVP of What's Wrong as my magical super power is the ability to immediately spot something out of order.  I would kill it as the person who looks at rental cars as they leave and return to the lot.  Absolutely everyone would be fined.  

I can literally walk into my kitchen while being mauled by my dogs, hands full, sunglasses on, beanie slipping over my eyes and I will see a 2 mm long scratch in the freezer door that wasn't there when I left that morning.

I'm like a dent-bat ... I have a specialized OCD echolocation.

On the downside, once it hits my radar that's when the obsessive part of my scrambled little ball of yarn of a brain latches on.  What happened, why is it this way, who did this (which is pointless),  why did this happen, I'll never not notice this, it's ruined, why can't things be the way I NEED them to be.  It's not a want, it's a need.  It's a critical need that sort of weaves the fabric of how I navigate the world together.

99.99999999999% of the time I just take care of it - I just clean it, repair it, mend it, replace it or really try to just accept it and move on.  Sometimes I can't ... 

The problem is - I have never had anyone catch me as I start to spiral in my little fixated mind.  I have never had anyone just step back and offer a "hey don't worry, let me help you or let me take care of this". This is why I had hoped Meditation would be a great thing for me because I can do that by myself.

Side Note: Telling someone with OCD to get over it doesn't usually help.  Not to cross a line into completely unreasonable but maybe a bit of compassion and kindness would go a long way.  

For me when I fixate on something, It's like walking into a room with red walls, with everyone wearing red, with every object painted red and someone is super annoyed that all you see is red when literally, EVERYTHING IS RED.

Not me: What Red
Me: It's everywhere - it's literally everywhere.
Not Me: Just stop it / Get over it / Deal with it 
Me: ((whispering to myself)) "it's everywheeeeeeeeeeeeeere ... so so so much red" 

Meditation is supposed to have tremendous benefits for people with OCD.  Neuroscientists believe that the human mind has 75,000+ thoughts a day but someone with OCD has more thoughts than they can actually quantify.  In fact, the American Psychological Foundation literally said that it's simply "too many" - it's hard to even fathom a guess.  If the non-OCD brain generates a thought about once every 1.5 seconds - the OCD brain, once spun up, is generating more than a thought per second.

People with OCD typically also have a shortage of dopamine and meditation is proven to increase dopamine production by 65% (thanks researchers @ Denmark's John F. Kennedy Institute for that).

At the moment - my brain has an overabundance of Dope and not enough Dopamine.  To be clear I'm not ON Dope ... I'm a meditation Dope.

Meditation has the ability to rewire our brains and we can reshape our lives through this path so I'm not giving up but I will say, this isn't as easy and fun as I had hoped.  If meditation can help me rewire other people's brains - I'd quit my job and become a Tibetan Monk.

While that's not likely what it will do is hopefully change my reaction to them. I need the Zen version of "I'm rubber and you're glue" 

If you have any tips, I'd love to hear them!!

This little cancer ass-kicker has been incorporated into people's daily lives as early as 2737 BC.  You know what else was going on around then?  Not a lot ... though I did read in my vast research that one of the first wine vines was planted in that year.  A good year for beverages it seems.

Green Tea - in case you are a devout coffee drinker, like me and never paid much attention to it is one of the greatest things on the planet.  That's a fact.

I didn't pay much attention to it until my father was diagnosed with Cancer.  Every single book I came across, and there were many, all had entire chapters devoted to Green Tea.  
As a result, I went online and bought a case of Green Tea.

I bought Ito En Oi Ocha Green tea and what I had in my mind that green tea would taste like was NOT what this tasted like.  It was bizarrely bitter to me and I pretty much hated it.  So I drank half, set it aside and a few moments later, I wanted more.  I still wasn't fully on board but I wanted to drink it - not because I read it in a book that I should drink it but I just wanted to.
I feel like somehow my body just knew what it needed and it's now easily my favorite thing to drink and have on hand.  I buy cases of this on Amazon and we can barely keep them around.  
​Finn even loves them and will drink one after Lacrosse.

My daily routine now includes 2-3 cups of Green Tea - it's something I really enjoy and it absolutely feels like I'm doing something good for my body.  As my dad would say "It certainly doesn't hurt"

Grab a cuppa and relax as part of your daily routine too - I think you'll love it as much as I do.