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…
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