Confessions

(They’re nothing like Usher’s thank heavens)

It’s time. Nik has been telling me this gently and not so gently. It’s time for me to just come out and say it.

I am a control freak.

It’s not entirely my fault though, I swear. Just look at what I found at typeapersonality.org:

“Individuals with Type A personality tend to get irritated or impatient at the slightest of changes in their plans. They also tend to get upset over the smallest issues. Individuals with type A personality often tend to display excessive aggressiveness under provoked situations which in turn causes a lot of stress and trauma in the individual and his or her well being.”

OH.MY.GOSH. It’s like they know me!

You too? Do you want to stop acting/being this way? Start dating a baseball player. It will be quite the adjustment but I guarantee you will become a more balanced person. It’s better than a stress management class and it comes with real-world experiences like dramatic breakdowns.

I know because I am a type A personality. I live for plans. To do lists, spreadsheets, detailed itineraries. They exhilarate me, they bring me joy—it’s a sickness. In baseball, there are really no such things as plans. You can make them but they rarely work out.

But the love of planning isn’t something that just goes away. So I’ve developed somewhat of a compromise for myself. I make tentative plans for every foreseeable option. Apartments we’ll live in if we’re in Trenton-check. Road trips I’ll go on if we’re in Scranton-decided. Days I’ll take off work if we’re in Tampa-you know those were set ten minutes after the schedule was released. I know there’s a large chance that none or all of these things will matter this season, but I’ve slowly become more flexible and I don’t even get “irritated or impatient at the slightest of changes in [my] plans” anymore usually (I’m a work in progress).

So why keep planning at all? One, it’s a compulsion. I can’t help or stop myself. But two, it makes me feel like I have some semblance of control. I simultaneously believe my plans will be worth something at some point and know that they won’t. It may sound crazy, but it’s the only thing that keeps me sane.