I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, or OCD. While this hasn’t been clinically diagnosed, I’m one hundred percent certain that I do. Let’s start by talking about why, and how I know. I’ll also be fairly open and comment on how this has affected and is affecting my life, so that those of you who may feel that you are suffering from the same illness don’t feel ‘alone’, as it were.

Obsessions

I obsess over most things in my life. Every morning, I have a routine, and if that routine isn’t carried out in the exact way I think it should be carried out, it bothers me. Severely. My hair has to look a certain way, and again if there’s a bit out of place then it’ll bother me. The amount that something bothers me is relative to how much it matters to me - for instance, if my hair is a little out of place, I’ll be a little frustrated but not angered; however, if someone doesn’t act the way I expect them to, I get mad especially if it’s someone important to me. This brings me swiftly onto the next part of my OCD, expectations. 

Expectations

I have expectations of literally everything. This is the strongest manifestation of my OCD, and perhaps the most damaging. Absolutely everything in my life I have an expectation over, and if it fails to live upto that, I end up frustrated, or even angry. I expect my phone to work in a certain way, buses to run in a certain way, food to taste a certain way, and (worst of all) I expect specific people to act in very specific ways. As is typical with having such expectations, most of them do not happen. This results in me being angry, and while I rarely have fits of rage over such things, it causes an unbearable and torturing amount of stress. This damages my relationships with people, because I’ve categorised everyone and if they don’t act how I’d like them to act, I treat them badly. 

At the end of the day, I simply can’t accept that the world won’t work in the way I want it to. We don’t live in an ideal world, but that’s something that just doesn’t seem to compute with me. I overthink, jump to conclusions, worry, obsess, and over-analyse ridiculously. Absolutely nobody sees the world like I do, and therefore nobody can understand my pain. I’ll be going to see a medical professional about this soon, and I’ll edit this post when I have a final outcome. 

Here I am, in bed, alone, listening to Owl City’s Vanilla Twilight. I miss my girlfriend so much it hurts right now; I miss the sound of her voice, I miss her cute smile, I miss the feeling of holding her hand - I miss everything about her. They say time apart and distance strengthens a relationship, and I think that’s true because although we have cars and trains I’d walk a hundred miles to see her right now.

Loyalty: ‘a strong feeling of allegiance to something or someone’. In this post, I’d like to explore the idea that while loyalty is a good things, there can also be a dark side to it. I’m an incredibly loyal individual; whether it’s with people or brands, I tend to form an attachment easily and stay devoted for a very long time. This makes me a good friend - I’m the type of person who’s always on the other end of the phone to talk, and I do a lot for my friends because I value my relationships very highly. 

So loyalty’s a good thing, right? Well, there is indeed a dark side to showing this much devotion to something or someone in your life: what happens when they don’t appreciate it? Also, what happens if they go away? For me, being a good friend to someone (or possibly even taking the relationship a little further) is a reason for me to get up in the mornings. I’ve used this phrase before, but what happens when one of the reasons you get up in the morning suddenly disappears? To an extent, it is easy to deal with this sort of thing, but when it comes to someone you’ve loved for a very, very long time, things get a little more significantly more difficult. 

The more devotion you show toward someone, the harder it is to deal with the pain when they go away. I’m not saying by any means that I’m now going to be a cold-hearted individual who doesn’t let people get close for fear of loss, because I don’t think I can change. Thing is, there are times when it isn’t your fault that these people go away, and if when you’ve been the most loyal and devoted person to them for so long, then it can take days, weeks, or even months to get over it. That’s why my loyalty is a trait, but also a huge downfall. 

Well here we go, folks; it’s that time again when I’m looking for yet another phone. This time, it’s more of a ‘political’ thing rather than me specifically needing a Nexus S. After all, it will most certainly be a downgrade from my current phone (HTC’s Incredible S) in terms of specs. So why am I selling a high-end HTC for a one-year-old, rather cheap-feeling Samsung? 

The main reason I’m pretty sure I’m going to the Nexus S is software updates. I am sick of HTC cutting their customers off after eight months. My phone was released earlier this year and it won’t get an update to Ice Cream Sandwich. To me, that’s outrageous. One of the main problems with Android is the fact that manufacturers like to install custom UIs, which slows down the update process for certain devices, and in some cases prevents an update from being available. 

The logical choice of Android phone in this situation would be the Galaxy Nexus, but as I’m a broke student, the Nexus S will have to do. I can’t sell my Incredible S for much, so the cost of me selling it will cover the cost of a brand new Nexus S off Amazon perfectly. The Nexus S will get ICS within the next few months, and it’ll probably get the next release of Android after that (most likely another eighteen months away); this makes it the only future-proof phone that I can realistically consider buying. The only real issue I originally saw with the Nexus S replacing my current device was the lack of HD video capture on its five megapixel camera, but the amount of phone photography I do is minimal, and for decent shots I’ll just use my Fujifilm S1600. 

I’m also fed up of HTC Sense slowing my phone down; something that was previously aesthetically-pleasing for me has just turned into a CPU hog/graphical nightmare of a UI. Stock Android is so much faster, and the Nexus S also has some pretty powerful graphics processing power. 

So at the end of the day, I’m happy to slightly downgrade my device for something that I feel will last me longer, and that will give me less grief. My current phone is like a Ferrari - powerful, but has a lot of flaws; the Nexus S is more of an Audi R8 - a sensible, slick, and reliable alternative. As a daily driver, I’ll happily take the R8 over a Ferrari. 

Look out for my final decision on Twitter over the next few weeks. 

Android has become so successful over the past couple of years, people are starting to cry over silly little things. There’s been an increasing number of people in the community crying (my term for moaning) about HTC’s locked bootloaders on certain Android devices. In short, a locked bootloader prevents users from installing custom ROMs (such as Cyanogen) on their devices. What does this mean? Hackers’ nightmare; average users probably couldn’t care less. 

I’m taking the Phil Nickinson approach to locked bootloaders: if you want an unlocked bootloader, buy a developer phone such as the Nexus S; don’t buy a more consumer-orientated device such as my HTC Incredible. Just because you’re a developer, or even just lean toward the developer community, doesn’t mean you should expect all companies to be open to hacking. After all, most people won’t hack their device. 

PS: Luckily, HTC recently made an announcement that they would no longer be locking bootloaders. No comment.