I'm an obsessive counter.
Oh yes, I can keep it quiet, I don't count matchsticks or anything, and I aitn't a vampire. But rest assured, when I'm with you, I'm counting my steps, the stairs, the tiles on the floor. Hell, I used to count sexual encounters--not partners, of which I've had relatively few, which I say not to be all NOT A SLUT but to point out how stupid counting is in this situation, but
individual activities--and kept it straight into the high four digits.
Can't help it, it's just part of my psyche. I've counted anything countable--and not told anyone about it--since I was a little kid.
So you know, I thought I'd tell the internet.
Knitting is an excellent past-time for me, since it involves a lot of counting and basic arithmetic. Arithmetic (I won't call it math) is a visceral pleasure for me, especially since I'm also a bit of a synaesthesiac, and numbers have colors and even notes, so when I add them together or count, their colors and sounds fire off in my brain. So knitting is by-god spectacular in there. (My brain is a weird, murky place, if you couldn't tell.)
I realized the other day whilst working on a camisole that is just a whole lot of boring stockinette stitch, that I can't concentrate on something that's not broken down into units. This is not an ADHD thing--not my particular brand of issue, though about half my family has it. I need the small rush of pleasure that comes with finishing a unit--a row, a block, an object--to keep going. So I put in stitch markers every twenty stitches or so, and am a happy bee. (Stitch markers are tech anyway, especially when making lace.) So my brain can do its counting-to-ten acid trip and also get the endorphin dump of feeling like progress is being made. God, you should see my head on road trips, endlessly recalculating arrival time with every new road sign. LJ friends-of are kind of hilarious in there, since their movement is unpredictable and largely unaffectable, but still has colors and feelings of progress attached. I was WAY into numerology as a youngling, for all these various reasons. It's still the New Age activity I'm most embarrassed about, mostly because it feels so
private, not because it's popularly maligned. You don't
count in front of other people!
Whenever I take up a new craft I compare it to writing, so this made me realize: I do the exact same thing with books.
I do a lot of arithmetic. If I write this many words every day I'll be finished by X time. Lather, rinse, repeat for each day's performance. (Which, by the way, do you guys have any interest in seeing what I do every day posted here? Wordcounts, projects, etc? Would it be horribly boring or interesting?)
Anyway, even if that schedule never works, the number thing is so pleasurable to me that I have to do it. And I have to split things up into chunks--chapters are convenient, and I can't say for sure that this isn't the source of my short chapter habit (considering the length of next week's
Fairyland chapter, I doubt it) but it's not only chapters. It's words. 5k is a. red and b. a milestone. I need to pay attention like that. The 10ks (silver) are big ones, and it matters to me all out of proportion when I complete a 10k portion. It's like a stitch marker.
Funny, I don't really notice bigger units, though. Like, even though there might be 3 or 4 units of 25k in my book, I don't note them. It's the 10k markers that I latch onto. They feel managable.
This process is pointless. It doesn't accomplish anything. But my vampire sense say it must be done or there will be no book. A book is made up of ever-increasing units. So is a hat. My brain thinks if it doesn't count things, they might be...sort of hurt. Same reason that when I was a kid I ate a little bit from everything on my plate in a specific order, so none of my food would feel like it was being left out. Good grief.
I wonder about this, though. Little rituals, and how they shape the world we choose to walk through. At some point I hadn't been counting things, and then I did. Maybe it was a conscious choice. Maybe not. But now it affects my work process and my daily living and hangs pretty, sparkly colored numbers all over it. I guess that's the definition of a habit. But I don't think I could break it if I wanted to.
This has been your confessions of a numerological freak. (ONE freak! AH HA HA.)