I noticed this morning that my dress shirts were organized by color. Which is odd, because I’m the one who hangs up those shirts. And I certainly hadn’t intentionally been sorting through my dry cleaning to group blues and greens and purples. Just the other day, however, I similarly caught myself reordering the bills in my wallet by denomination. And for months I’ve taken guilty pleasure in categorizing and alphabetizing my CDs.

When did this happen? Why isn’t there anything on the floor of my apartment? Whatever happened to the younger me who, just five years ago, wasn’t even sure the color of the carpet in his room due to the wall-to-wall piles of clothing, books, papers, instruments, athletic gear and other possessions covering it? Somehow I’ve become anal retentive, and I’ve got to stop the dangerous progression now, before, one day, I awake to find I’ve arranged the spice rack by the potency and national origin of each spice.