Simply for your enjoyment

This has nothing to do with anything. It is a draft of an essay I wrote for one of my applications. Enjoy.

Briefly describe your most satisfying experience related to community service.

As I lugged cartfuls of food to my car through the pouring rain, I thought about how unfortunate it was that none of the other volunteers had shown up. I was tempted to back down, to say that I could not handle all of that food by myself and that a lot of it would probably get thrown out at the shelter anyway. But the shelter was counting on receiving food from Wash U that night—maybe not so freaking much food, but I couldn’t be sure. All I knew for sure was that I had a responsibility to Dining Services, to Feed St. Louis, to the shelter, and to its clients. Inclement weather and lack of help were hardly excuses to evade my duty. The woman who answered the door at the shelter was impressed by my dedication, but delivering that food was the least I could do in the noble effort to reduce waste and give to those in need.

So imagine my dismay when I learned that Feed St. Louis would no longer be collecting leftover food from the dining halls. In fact, they would no longer exist. They were now a Campus Kitchen. I regained my sense of purpose, however, when I learned that the Campus Kitchen group desperately needed someone to pick up donated food from a local grocery store on Thursday mornings. I didn’t start class until 1 on Thursdays, and I could not think of a better way to spend my mornings than contributing to the worthy cause of feeding the hungry in St. Louis. Except perhaps sleeping or studying, but I volunteered anyway. I began to regret that decision as I struggled to see out the back of my car, which was practically exploding with perfectly good bread that had not been sold by its sell by date. Still, there was something satisfying about dragging two bags of buns behind me down the stairs to the kitchen—thump, thump, thump. "It’s going to bruise," someone warned me. "It’s already smushed from the journey in my car," I said. "Besides, I don’t give a fuck." The freezer was still packed with bread from the previous week, so I left the new batch sprawled across the floor. "Bread—50 solar masses" I wrote on the food log. I came to the unfortunate realization that much of the food I was salvaging would eventually be thrown out anyway. "Are there other groups that can use some of this bread?" I asked one of the Campus Kitchen coordinators. "There is an abundance of bread everywhere, but we are working on it," she assured me. For the time being, all I could do was keep lugging that bread, with the hope that one day bread production in St. Louis would decrease to reasonable levels and funds would be redirected to areas in need, like the production and distribution of other kinds of food.

Where do I go from here?

Do you ever feel... stuck?



In OCD, there's a problem with the feedback loop that tells us that we are no longer in danger, or that it's okay to move on.

People with "obsessive slowness" may take 20 minutes to walk through their front door.

I get stuck on tasks like writing an essay. Or an email. Or a blog post.

I don't know what to write about. I don't know how to word it. That's not good enough. Sentence by sentence, I recite and revise in my head what I want to say. Too much effort. I am getting sleepy. Time for a break.

I am stuck in the molasses swamp, waiting to draw the card that will get me unstuck. (I just came up with that one. Clever, eh? No? I don't care. I am tired.)

*Wait a minute, are you saying that if I struggle with writing essays, then I have OCD?* No. *But you are implying that you have OCD, right?* No. Many behaviors are best characterized as lying somewhere along a continuum. For any given behavior, most of us fall somewhere in the middle. So how do we decide what's pathological? Good question. Stay tuned for DSM-V.



Now what?

Meet the OCD monster fetus

I really want to have a blog! Why? Because I have a sub-clinical obsessive-compulsive need to let people know what I think (have I ever told you my thoughts on religion?) and to be funny (I know people think I'm funny; it's because it's true). So I'd like to write about whatever the hell I want and get constant feedback from hundreds of admirers. But it doesn't work like that. People have their own lives and don't necessarily want to read my nonsense. Or maybe they'll read it but won't feel like commenting. So then I face the menacing "what if"s. What if no one comments on my blog? Even worse, what if no one reads it? That would suck majorly. But why? Because people would be missing out on my genius, yes, but also because I would be getting no reassurance that I'm funny or have good ideas. Ah, so the underlying "what if" here is, what if I'm not funny and my ideas suck? I have reason to believe that that's probably not true, but it is possible. I will never know for sure. But I can live with that.

So, is this blog going to be about anything other than the fact that maybe no one will read it? Well, yeah, I'm not writing solely for the purpose of hearing myself type, though that is part of it. There's going to be content. I've alluded to it already. My inspiration came from a conference I attended this past weekend--the International OCD Foundation Annual Conference (many thanks to the friend who told me about it). It was awesome. I learned so much. The obsessive-compulsive spectrum is fascinating. I've found my calling, whatever that means. For one, it means that I've found something worth blogging about. But first I have to get these pesky med school apps done. So for now I'll leave you, dear possibly-existent readers, to ponder and anticipate. Comments are always welcome, but know that pure reassurance only feeds the OCD monster fetus.

P.S. Knowing me, I'll probably lose interest and never write a second post. Let's hope not! I'll take that as a challenge.