Is there a Perfectionists Anonymous?…

I feel like today is as good a day as any to proof my tentative sanity is just that… tentative. However it is also a personal belief of mine that sanity… much that same as beauty is in the eye of the beholder. What is it they say? Its sane to think yourself insane and many an insane person thinks themself sane. A very good thing too considering I’m positive I’m not sane much of the time. Sanity is much the same as the ‘normal’ nothing is completely normal but it some are more closely aligned to the social construct than others.

People seem to enjoy doing the extrapolation thing. Human law of averages… it isn’t necessarily the average but it looks ‘good’. Funny how all these words are interdependent too… its ‘normal’ to be ‘good’ and that means your ‘sane’ also. What that says about me, a non believer in the generalised ‘normal’ I don’t know… I think I prefer it this way though. Getting stuck in the ‘normals’ which then become confused by human desire with the current ‘perfects’ is no good for anybody. The number of health problems, unrealistic expectations and unachievable goals that come from all that… well you could say that's normal too.

Anyhow. Despite my refusal to admit to there being a wide swept normal or a truly universal perfect I myself am a perfectionist. If Monday-itis can be a recognised mental condition then perfectionist must also be. Though it hasn’t made the news in the last few years like Monday-itis has for me to be sure of anything. All I know is it leads to all kinds of personally pessimistic thought accompanied by unrealistic stress levels. So what do I do? Pick a high stress occupation but that’s another thing entirely. One thing I do have going for me is I don’t suffer from Monday-itis I suppose.

Well on to the perfectionist issue. I guess there is a lot of forms of perfectionism… each to their own and all that. No too minds are alike… a good thing because similar personalities tend to get on each others nerves. Ahhh movie facts… never the less it is true in real life to varying extents. Getting back to my perfectionism though. It is interesting how it works. Perfectionism is something even I would associate with compulsive planners and real study bunnies. A personality I admittedly went through in my younger years but have… unfortunately for my studies… grown out of.

The current day me is a world class procrastinator and a terrible planner. I was in charge of arranging an outing for all the residents of our building… not my strong point. One of those times when you don’t appreciate being volunteered by another person… if one ever appreciates being volunteered by somebody else that is. At any rate perfectionism combined with the addictive tendency to procrastinate leads to even more stress… I remember at school not being able to identify if I’d ever had a headache… let alone could remember what one felt like. These days its a good day when I don’t develop the minor stress ache.

However a lot of people look at me as just a little bit odd if not ridiculous from time to time. People accept things like the fear of heights or the fear of spiders – though regrettably occasionally with some humour at the suffers expense. For me I have the basic fear of public speaking, from there I also have a fear of telephoning people – it gets better only with people I know well. I often have to lock up myself in my room and even start a countdown to get the ball rolling when I have to ring out. I had this for a number of years thinking it was something specific about telephones that was bad… well it is and they certainly make things worse… but my problem actually arises from being forced to ask something of another person.

I have really bad people skills. Partially simply because I’m introverted by nature and find my own company more comfortable. Perfectionism however emphasises that… it makes me constantly aware of every little thing wrong with me… whether realistic or not. The need to not be like that makes me more and more uncomfortable which leads to more things wrong – and you can see the negative cycle spiral from there. It also makes me often a bad loser. Be it at games or homework questions or… just about anything else.

I can’t tell if it is the perfectionist spotting it or the sane person within but I HATE what perfectionism makes me do. As a grow older I’m getting better at it all… I can ring the people I have to to get the job done – though if there is a web form process for it I’ll take it every time. I am able to spot when things don’t need to matter to me… Unfortunately I still only have to degrees of caring stress out or ‘I don’t get a damn’. I’m still working on the ever essential middle ground there. Caring too much is possibly bad for my health but it isn’t so bad… but the caring too little is just as hazardous. So this is what I do in my spare time… analyse my own faults. Actually personality typing and typical human responses… all very interesting to me. However this is enough or I’ll never keep up on my study…

In Contact – Sort of…

Welcome back to the hell hole… I did get a talk something along those lines this morning. Just great. The only good thing about being back in this place is switching my brain back on. Well I certainly hope it turns back on or I’ll be screwed attempting to maintain my average. Attended my first classes of the semester today and I’m very glad that Mondays have gone from my worst to my best day of the week. Ease myself back into the swing of things… hopefully… as into things as you ever get in this place at any rate.

But anyway… As for a topic for me to ramble about… I’m sadly lacking. I was thinking about what it means to be ‘incommunicado’ the other day. But unfortunately I lost all train of thought before I got back to my computer… In brief (as that’s as good as I do remember the topic). That incommunicado is a situation that can be reached these days simply by switching off a mobile phone. Depending on your work based popularity it could be 5 minutes or 5 days (I fill sorry for the last group) but eventually people will fell completely unable to contact you.

It was more about the modern day dependency on technology for people tracking. And the instantaneous stress out that often takes hold if you can’t get at a hold of a person RIGHT THIS SECOND. Perhaps this is also due to an increasing tendency for people to leave stuff… of all degrees of importance… to the last minute. Its habit… because they can. The quicker you can get into contact with people some of the time, the quicker you assume you can get into contact with people all the time. Its funny how that works… its like the movie Click really… That's about the most productive thing i did yesterday – watch Click. Rather clique sort of a movie though really.

Can something like procrastination be considered to be an epidemic? Anyway they say it is something the younger generations suffer from tremendously from the habit. Short attention spans and procrastination go hand in hand. It tends to be more the attention span that people worry about… but nevertheless. Procrastination the generations increasing inability to plan in the long term or pay attention for periods of time comes from an age of instant response. People have not always expected a reply a few days before to make the arrangements so in the human generalising manner they assume people are never going to expect a few days notice… and from there it progresses.

This topic actually leads me onto something else… One of those things you notice while talking on MSN. You must remember I am a Gen Y member, 18 and proud… Constant but not personal contact with our friends is something we experienced all through high school. Texting from school to home, instant messaging once you’re at home, phone calls if you must (never my favourite thing though). A friend and I were discussing procrastination. As a note this is perhaps the best topic to discuss when attempting to procrastinate without anything really to talk about. The number of hours I have spent procrastinating and discussing the simple fact that I’m procrastinating I’m sure would be quite amazing.

Though as always we weren’t simply discussing procrastination. In fact we were discussing T.V. usage… and the fact that I personally do not have access to television during the working week very easily. Not that I don’t have a number of T.V. series on DVD to while away the time but still… So from there it lead on to the challenge that because I don’t have television i probably get a lot more done. I wish. If i locked myself in a room with nothing by my work to occupy me I would procrastinate… daydream, outright sleep, knocking my head against the wall rather than work I’m sure it wouldn’t matter. In this particular conversation, remembering I have all the distractions of my room (including 2 computers – one of those stories…), I picked up on Facebook.

Facebook is one more of those things which just allows our generation to confirm our generalisations about life. The whole constant contact thing really goes to the extreme on there. You don’t have to be on there at the same time as your friend to talk, to communicate, to ‘feel a part of their lives’ or something equally as ridiculous when you say it out loud. At the same time it also provides an outlet for procrastination. One of the things with procrastination is it is almost always worse in company – however artificial. I procrastinate on Facebook… a lot.

Ever sat on your homepage just WAITING from somebody else to say something on their Facebook page? Not even so you can reply to it… Just to read it… to ‘give you something to do’… Incapable of giving yourself something to do even though you obviously have something you should be doing… or else why procrastinate? The less you have to do the less desire you have to do anything… Or that’s how I find it when i go from work to holidays and back to work again.

This time I’ve really done it… There isn’t a much of a link between any of my ideas here… I’ve had as much thought I suppose recently but not the normal leading argument type of thinking I often have with myself. Ahh well… maybe after spending a few hours staring at a Facebook page – something I haven’t done in a few days – something will come to me. Until then.

Number Plates – Personality or Insanity

Once again I’ve been doing nothing. Though I have finally got my semester marks today. Always a sign of the beginning of the end… I like getting results… A generally scatterbrained perfectionist I don’t keep track of things like individual results and I generally belittle my own capabilities so all in all its a pleasant surprise to get results. I wouldn’t have given myself such a good mark in language (the equivalent of an a B, HA, Distinction, 6… I’ve run out of equivalent marking systems) but hey… Maybe my partner really was that bad – made me look good :). But anyway… enough of my gloating over marks with are only cool for the next… oh 4 days until next semester starts on Monday. DARN… That just keeps coming up… the end of all my freedom.

On to something I can talk about without mourning the end of the holidays any more. I couldn’t come up with anything within the confines of my mind (which IS still on holidays) to talk about but I wanted to type for a bit. Sooo… I’m going to talk about personalised plates. If there is anybody in the world who is yet to know what exactly these are. Car registration number plates – used to identify cars by people and police alike. Only personalised plates are of course not the standard ones given out with car registration but plates bought by people to display specific letter – number configurations.

I don’t happen to think there is anything wrong with the progressively more outdated style of going with the standard issue plates. Perhaps it another old hat sort of thing this being the age of dvd players with screens on the back of seats but hours in the car were often whiled away counting cars. Kids today would probably find car counting quite a boring sort of thing to do. I loved it… As I got older the game didn’t so much die as become more elaborate. Tracking cars, trucks, buses, caravans, motorbikes simultaneously on long road trips (on admittedly empty Australian rural highways) provided a challenge at any age. Try it some time.

However the number plate game… It is much more my mother’s game. The word game rather than the number game. It involves reading number plates of passing cars. Coming up with entertaining meanings for the all-caps acronyms presented by the car plates. Plates like ‘--- ILE’ become I like elephants at the easy end of the scale. Some of the more complex ones come in OXS and the like… Other Xylophone Symphonies? The true entertainment value comes in the speed of the answer. The faster a completely ridiculous answer is pulled from the nether regions of one’s brain the greater the insinuation of ones insanity :P. As a note that is NOT where the insanity of the title comes in… Just proof there is ‘insanity’ lurking at the edges of everything a person does… If it isn’t their still insane… I love a good Catch 22.

The number plate game loses its appeal with plates like JIM 89 or SOCCA. You can see exactly what they are intended to be. There can’t really be much of a hidden message to discover because they obviously aren’t acronyms. Though there is a new version of the game developed attempting to decode the more unspecific personalised plates. Plates that feel like initials or perhaps favourite things. Putting names to cars is pretty good though I still prefer the old fashion acronym game myself. Though names I’m going to admit are a soft spot of mine… I love the old classics but names of all kinds interest me.

But during the game you do more than just see a persons name. In plates like SOCCA or 10 SMUM (tennis mum) you see a little of the person’s personality. However some times I’m going to say I wonder if you really want to be sharing that with the world. Its rather like a tattoo… You keep a personal plate for a long time. Do you want to be DEVIL forever? As one of the plates many names says ‘vanity plates’ are all about showing how cool you are for being you. Or something like that. Plates are one off a kind… the kind of money 21 and F1 have gone for is simply ridiculous.

However the plate that started it all today was ‘SUE EM’. Not having any numbers its obviously not a cheap number plate. The fact that it was on a high end Volvo sedan added to the overall theme of the matter. I’m guessing the car belongs to a lawyer… But that’s just a guess :). It certainly has an initial funny about it. And there is certainly a strong hint which leaves everybody pretty certain they know you are a lawyer. Still ‘SUE EM’ is a little bit of an aggressive sort of a statement. To me I see it as a rather unprofessional sort of a statement to have plastered on your car that your clients may see. But hey that is just me.

People… naturally inclined to build up stories and rely on stereotypes… take a lot more away from a personalised plate than just the word logo. All sorts of things are decided about the person in the car… Some good and some bad and many completely without basis. What I just did up there is entirely that. I’m certainly not beyond using stereotype to fill in the blanks about people I haven’t met. The trick comes in not holding it against them when you do meet them. Or being upset by similar opinions decided in other people. Just the same in the case of the lawyer… Particularly in that profession they’d know a lot about public personas and the effect of reputation. All in all vanity plates well… there was nothing wrong with the old way of things but the vanity plates certainly spice things up and makes it easier perhaps to remember your own registration?

Doppelganger

Definitely one of the strangest words in the standard English vocabulary. Everybody knows it, knows what it means. Probably because of the conspiracy theory type nature of the meaning. Everybody wants to have an opinion on these types of things. Do we or don’t we? People have a yes or a no opinion or often most interestingly their own elaborate fabrication of the state of being. Some kind of personal experience or ‘research’ which proves… at least to them… beyond reasonable doubt that it is the state of the universe that this is so.

One of the most personally entertaining conspiracy theories I know is one of my dads creation. Literally creation, it is his elaborate position on how it is matter is created in the universe. It is completely unrealistic… well unscientific… which in the modern world position is unrealistic. However, isn’t that the fun of most conspiracy theory? Stories invented to entertain the more suspicious parts of the human brain.

Anyway Dad’s theory… Its a bit cruel to mention it without sharing it. Though I must warn that it isn’t quite as good second hand as it is with my dad’s conviction of truth behind it. We used to live in a house, a rented house, that was completely carpeted… However after we’d been living there about 2 years the owner decied to have all the carpet taken up and replaced.. with wood flooring. We went from vacuuming to oil mopping. From emptying a vacuum bag to beating the mop like a blackboard duster. The one thing that couldn’t be missed was the lint… it was constantly accumulating. People say that’s a bad thing about carpet… it accumulates dust that even the vacuum can’t clean out. Still I think I’d prefer it and I think it was better for my dad’s sanity.

The lint he found increasingly irritating. No matter how frequently you mopped the floor the dust and lint was there accumulating the the corners at an extraordinary rate. Every Sunday morning my brother mopped the floors and every Sunday afternoon it started to get dusty all over again. So after a couple of months… And the loss of a number of dads work socks through the standard washer then dryer cycle. The number one cause of sock loss in the world I’m sure. He told me he had solved the secret of the universe. Dad had determined by ‘experimental research’ of our home that matter obviously comes into the universe via lint… and one of the key creation points is our very own home. Additionally matter leaves the universe in the form of socks though dryers all over the world… As I say not as cool as when dad goes through his elaborate description of it but definitely an entertaining view of the world.

Anyway back to the namesake of my ramblings today. I did initially start this writing to talk about my own view of the doppelganger theory. Personally I’m not big on conspiracy theory… A large number of them are out there specifically attacking Christian faith and belief. However some of the more interesting ones like doppelgangers and was there ever a man on the moon. The entertaining thing about these kinds of con. theories is no matter how loyal you are to your own point of view watching or listening to propaganda for the other said is like watching a movie… suspension of belief… or disbelief depending… is a wonderful thing.

Oh dear… I do seem to be having a time of it trying to stay on topic today. Probably because I haven’t written in over a week. From doing NOTHING for the last week. I seem to be suffering from a lack of things to procrastinate from. When there isn’t work you should be doing and stuff you shouldn’t be doing because it means you aren’t doing your work you end up doing… pretty close to nothing. People call it relaxing… it is… but it is also nothing… I have wasted sooo much time with nothing to show for it. Well… there is a lot of hours of watching CSI Miami and playing gimmicky computer games I wouldn’t normally have the time of day for. Never the less brain off time is good. It is just about as addictive as procrastination. Unfortunately unlike procrastination it leads to nothingness. So as much as I am dreading going back to work, to uni, to real life it’ll be good for me.

Anyhow… Doppelgangers. I’m a believer. Not that two people are perfectly identical except in the case of twins but certainly two people can look similar enough that you need to do the double to triple take. Doppelgangers are one of the more entertaining of phenomenon. Identical twins just have to suffer after all its something they really did bring upon themselves even if it was long before they had any conscious thought or decision making skills. However for non identical people people mistaken for another person can create confusion, frustration or most importantly entertainment value. Now I am also going to say my entertaining doppelganger doesn’t only come in the physical sense.

One of the most entertaining doppelganger style situations I live with on a daily basis is my neighbour one of the two people last named ‘Jones’. Wonderful thing about the technology age… A whole new form of doppelganger now exist. She shares one, admittedly critical, piece of information with one of the other guys in our building and it causes all sorts of entertaining mix up. That are different sexs, live in different halls, do different degrees but all sorts of mix ups in mail, in paperwork, in degree requirements are constantly happening… to the entertainment of all who are not them.

Put anyway the more classic doppelganger theory. Everybody has somebody in the world that is the spitting image of them. I’m just going to point out the obvious… In most cases if you are going to have a doppelganger it is going to be a relative. But by no means always. There was a story… must be a slow news week… the other day where the news crews had come up with a doppelganger of… don’t quote me my memory might be failing me… but Tom Cruise? my celebrity knowledge isn’t great so I can’t be sure. But they took it around. The guy’s likeness so striking they managed to get all the star treatment wherever they went.

Unfortunately the trick to doppelgangers is people only want one it the other person is famous. I personally can claim doppelganger status. Incredible though it may be me and a cousin 8 years my senior are spitting image of one another… well I am of her I guess being the younger one. Its quite entertaining to think considering if I went through we have different eye colour, different noses, different body shapes… and yet. If it seems unlikely that that we could manage to confuse people. I managed to be mistaken for her at her wedding! several years ago… I’m talking 15 year old girl mistaken for a 23 year old woman in a wedding dress. Not by any old people either but by family. Admittedly the kind of family of hers that wasn’t family of mine. But it certainly goes a long way in proving a point.

You wont some more doppelgangers? The Olsen twins are perhaps the most famous doppelgangers going… or they were a few years back. The two are admittedly sisters. But sisterhood doesn’t guarantee the kind of likeness that leads to identical twin status for fraternal twins… well i think that is the term. Doppelgangers are the most fun though… All those celeb look alike pages in school year books… all in spirit of good fun.

Movies and Freedom

Well... In honour of the fact that I got the entire afternoon off... complete with permission to leave the campus!... I went to the movies. The shops on a weekday surprise me by how indifferent they are to Saturday mornings. Shouldn't people be working at 2 o'clock on a Thursday afternoon? Of course the crowd is marginally different, a lot more mothers with babies and the like. I'm out of the loop but I hope that we are currently in school holidays though given the number of teens I spotted. On a high note I didn't see any mothers with babes that were teens... though that by no means discounts the number of them likely to be around.

I'm going to admit now to being a very poor shopper. I don't even window shop that great. I just go for a walk about, up and down the various... corridors?... I'm not actually sure if you'd call the large open walkway that links together shops a corridor... never the less... I have to be in the mood to buy stuff to shop effectively and recently I've been a little low on the money side of things. By no means broke but a part of me is a very avid saver, really probably a hoarder of money. After having to touch my semi savings for the first time in a while (yes I actually have two different levels of savings account) I've gone in to conservation mode.

I'm not saying I'm unique in my month matters schemes. In fact I'm sure a lot of people do far more extreme things than I. It just entertains me that I manage to be a saver at all given my non-planner approach to such matters. I don't have any sort of formal or informal budget plan. It isn't that I'm planning money in order to save this much and have this much by this time as it is for lots of people. I just like not spending it. I need to have very wide buffers when I use my money - never know what could happen :).

But who wants to hear about my money anyway? As with so many things it is often more of a taboo topic. Anyways.. The movie I went to see, Sunshine Cleaners, was pretty good. Though I walked into a cinema of older people... Except for two younger men sitting together (I don't like the fact that society stereotypes mean that I'm not able to see that without going to 'homosexual') I was probably the only person in the room under 45 or 50. You can always seem to tell a movie by its audience to... I know for sure that had it been the Transformers 2 cinema I'd have been surrounded by a lot of guys around my own age. A lot of the guys from uni were there watching it, I saw them in the ticket line. However our crowd of middle-aged/older women, alone in many cases, hinted towards more life drama than the obvious action and sex appeal of the other movie.

That sounds about right to me :). I've never handled horror full stop and I'm not a great fan of some action movies either. Suspense does it to me. I mean I actually got a little worried at one point in the movie I was watching. I always get the awful feeling something bad is going to happen at the least encouragement. Perhaps some people are just more sceptical, or is the word gullible, than others. I am willing to admit to being gullible in the sense that no matter how unlikely something is IF I can't prove it isn't true... who knows? Not a bad thing. However the movies thing? I am overly susceptible to the music I think... Who would have thought a person completely incapable of accurately gage or responding to other peoples emotion could be the most susceptible?

Other than the movie though. I couldn't really bring myself to hang about the shops. Doing though one of my infrequently frequent loner spells. It strange just how physical a feeling it is. My brain feels almost like it has wrapped itself up in isolation. Its not that volume changes or colour grows dim but it feels just as though I've surround myself in glass or something. I become a watcher... and often not a particularly good one. I am not one for remembering what I've seen even if the thought sequence I went on was long and reasonable profound (in comparison with others).

However I did notice a few things. The number of Asians in Australia. I realise they are everywhere. They are always going to be. With one billion people in China and a colouring that is dominate enough that no others exist any longer in the Asian peoples there is going to be a lot. But I was more thinking about the ticking clock until Australia is a predominate Asian country. With our migration policy it may not be too long, though for the moment will still have UK coming in second billet of nationality populations. More than the turning in population minorities/majorities though. I was thinking about the number of people that already assume that is how it is going to be... after all Australia is in Asia, right?

Somehow the whole Australia is a CONTINENT thing gets neglected because Australia is a single country which has 21 or so million people. It basically only got those from which ever other country lets people come our way. Not a bad statement to make though given the majority of the population are from overseas or first generation Aussies. It hurts to think that no matter how long you can trace you family in Australia when people ask your origin you still have go back to the country they came from BEFORE here. Apparently Aboriginals are the only people who are native to Australia. Sometimes it amuses me to think we manage to have any patriotism at all in light of such arguments.

Back on the topic of Asia though. Australia cannot become an extension of Asia. Because it is not IN Asia. Maybe people get confused because Indonesia and the like are parts of South East Asia and they really aren't all that fair away. However I picked up the other day while studying for my Indonesian exam that Indonesia actually sits across a line, the Wallace line I think it was. That separates the flora and fauna of Asia and Australian regions. I'll even allow the use of the term Australasia because of other countries part of our region of the world that aren't Australia. (not New Zealand though we always wanted to prove a 'blood tie' of sorts to them) Flora and fauna are far better separators. Unlike people they don't (generally) go around the world attempting to thrive in areas other than their own outside the influence of humans.

The other thing I noticed was a couple with a significant height difference. It entertains me that people who are 2 feet different in height manage to appeal to each other... Sometimes it seems more often than not. I'm not sure if its the shorter wanting taller kids or the taller never wanting their kids to have to know 6'7" but so many tall men I know have very short, 5' nothing short, partners. The law of averages that keeps the height from not increasing in variation too much from generation to generation?

Just to point out I hope nobody takes this as insulting in any way, shape or form. I am not speaking through prejudice. I'm more than happy to take people as equal. But it doesn't stop stereotyping from amusing me. Some stereotypes are almost ludicrous and yet there are people conformed to them. Almost as if no longer is it base the stereotype on the people... but base the people from the sterotype :)