A Little Obsessed--Jan Blazanin

I tend to get carried away. Not about everything, but often enough that I can list “sporadic obsessiveness” as a personality trait.

I don’t remember being particularly obsessive as a teen. I experienced the customary angst about grades, unrequited crushes, my inadequately budding female parts, etc. My pillow was alternately kissed, hugged, punched, and wept into. But those are typical events in the carefree life of a high school girl.

When I reached my 20s, my obsessive nature sprouted, blossomed, and grew into a towering sequoia. My first obsession was running. Many people are content with building up to a 10K for their first race. Not me. As soon as I worked up to a mile, I was off and…running. A marathon, then another, then I had to qualify for Boston. Soon I was training 70-90 miles a week. Bronchitis, influenza, tendinitis, and stress fractures—I ran through them all. Obsessed? Yah think?

Naturally, I needed some strength training to complement my running. Not your average hit-the-gym-three-days-a-week weight training. Two-a-day workouts, five days a week. Competitive bodybuilding. Powerlifting. Who could be more suited to heavy lifting than a 112-pound woman with bird bones and wrists that reach all the way to her elbows?

 
After a few years of feeding those passions, the inevitable injuries forced me to cut back to a saner schedule. What to do with those free hours?

Why, jewelry making, of course. As with running and weightlifting, I didn’t let my lack of natural talent deter me. I spent my weekends haunting junk stores for hideous old necklaces and bracelets. During the week I painstakingly removed the baubles and bangles from the hideous old jewelry, rearranged them, and created hideous new jewelry. After several trips to consignment stores—where I actually unloaded two necklaces—I concluded that jewelry making was not for me.

You think I’m going to tell you about my obsession with writing now, but you’re wrong. Every published author is obsessed with writing or we wouldn’t be published. The compulsion to write isn’t news in this group.

These days I’m getting carried away with gimmicks to promote my books. But it’s more than that. It’s an irresistible urge to assemble, enhance, and possess items related to my books.

The craving began when I had some bookmarks printed for Fairest of Them All. Nothing unusual about that. But the bookmarks seemed so plain. So I punched holes in 200 of them, bought colored string, and gave them tassels. Cool, but what about beaded tassels? After tromping through craft stores and searching the net, I found the perfect beads—little tiaras to represent Ori‘s beauty queen status. I punched holes in a few hundred more bookmarks and threaded the beads on my colored string. Best bookmarks ever!

What I’m putting together for A&L Do Summer leaves those bookmarks in the dust. In fact, that was supposed to be the topic of this post until I got carried away telling you about all my other obsessions. Now I’ll have to wait until next month’s post to tell you.

Story of my life.