Perfectionism

So it turns out I'm kind of a huge perfectionist. People have pointed this out to me before but I'm always all "LOL CLEARLY you haven't seen the state of my house!" but a while ago I realized that my house is so messy a lot of the time because I'm a perfectionist. I only really feel like cleaning if I know I will get it done perfectly, and that requires quite a bit of time and effort that I don't have or am not willing to give up. (Maybe I should point out that cleaning "perfectly" means something kind of different to me than to many other people, but it still applies.)

And holy crap have I perfectionisted (you heard me) my way into not accomplishing things artwise! For instance; I have been planning to make a childrens book for half my freaking life, and I have started like ten of them, but since they weren't perfect I gave up on them. I have loads of ideas for them and people tell me all the time I should do childrens books, but... no. And I hate doing commissions because the pressure to make them perfect gets even worse when someone has paid me to do them, and I'm pretty much never happy with the results even if the person who commissioned me is perfectly pleased.

I also have a need to be perfect in my opinions and feelings. I've wasted a shitload of energy on trying to decide what to think about all kinds of issues that I have no real reason to have an opinion about at all. I mean; it's one thing if they are things I'm properly interested in, but half the time I just feel kind of forced to find the Perfect Opinion so I will have it ready if someone asks me about it. It's really pathetic. And man have I beaten myself up about having the wrong feelings! I'm not really the kind to blow up in people's faces or get very angry or whatever, but when it does happen I have an amazingly difficult time to forgive myself for it. If I'm not perfectly understanding and accepting and calm at all times I feel like a massive failure who is more trouble than I am worth.

I have also spent a lot of time thinking I couldn't be in a committed relationship because I wasn't "done yet", like I would one day wake up as a beautiful perfect butterfly or whatever. I'm starting to understand that this will not happen.

It even makes me put off really tiny  things like answering comments or sending e-mails. I'm all "Noooo, I need to spend more time on this so I can word it perfectly..." which usually either amounts to 1) not doing it at all, or 2) forcing myself to do it and then it just gets rushed and stupid. This goes for more or less all e-mails; including two sentence ones asking a printer how much they charge to print something. Because OBVIOUSLY it's really important that I don't come off as stupid or whatever to the faceless printer guy who has no idea who I am.

My standards for myself are vastly different than for other people, and I never understood why that was. The only explanation I could think of why I didn't allow to fuck up once in a while like other people was that I somehow thought I was above them, and then I had to beat myself up for thinking I was superior, but it didn't feel right at all since I haven't been the most confident person in the world for most my life. Then I read the section on perfectionism in The 10 Dumbest Mistakes Smart People Make and How To Avoid Them (that I got for dad for Christmas to read myself) and realized that the reason I think it's fine for other people to make mistakes is that they are already good enough as it is, while I myself am worthless if I'm not 100% perfect. It's funny (as in pretty fucking sad) that when I mess up I fully accept and expect that I will not be forgiven for it, even if it's a minor mistake and I have apologized for it; yet if someone else does something shitty to me I think I am the sucky one if I can't forgive them.

I need to learn to use my perfectionism to push me to achieve grand things instead of letting it keep me from doing anything at all, and the only way to do that is to let myself fail a whole lot. I need to learn to assess when it's productive to work towards perfection, and when it's better to just aim for good.

And god damn is that tricky.