"They should make pills for this!"

My life looks much like this tray.

No, I'm not being cute. Or allegorical. Or philosophical.

I'm serious. I compartmentalize.

Not because I'm that organized. Or rigid. Or humorless.

It's just that way.

You'll note there are 5 compartments.

In my life, those five compartments represent work, church, home, family, friends.

These facets of my life don't really touch each other.

I don't like my food to touch.

I don't like parts of my life to touch either.

I don't hang out socially with people from work. The only exceptions I made to this "rule" were when I was a teenager and everyone I worked with was from my high school, and 2 years ago when I changed jobs and loosened this standard because I knew I was leaving.

This compulsion includes the separation between church and home. I don't like anyone but friends and family in my house. This includes people from church. But my visiting teachers were invited in anyway on Wednesday. Because I am, after all, a semi-rational person.

I only occasionally intermix the individual categories with each other and have different friends hang out together or have both of our families together at one time.

But generally I don't mix the different areas of my life. For fear they might all run together. And make a mess. A sloppy, runny, confusing (albeit colorful) conglomerate of what should have been separate pieces of my life.

Compartmentalization helps me feel like I have a sense of order. And an expanded self-expression. And some other things I can quite put my finger on.

They really should make pills for this!

[Title quote is from "Serendipity"]