So...what does practice make...?

Recently, my aunt and uncle came to visit.  My uncle has been a psychiatrist for upwards of 20 years, and, eventually, the conversation drifted toward--what else?--Myers-Briggs personality types.  A few moments after discovering that I am an INFJ, my uncle posed a question to me.  "So," he began with a fleeting smile, "I'm sure you don't succumb to one of the INFJ's greatest weaknesses: obsessive perfectionism.  Or do you...?"

I can't remember exactly how I responded, but I'm sure it went something like this: laugh, shrug, give a brief (and ambivalent) reply, and wait for the moment to pass.  And it did.

A few days later, though, I was discussing my writing with someone.  When I apologized for not having any completed pieces of work to share, I received the following response: "No, that's okay!  I know for you that 'completed' is often synonymous with 'perfect.'"

Hmmm...I'm beginning to see a bit of a trend here...

I guess--for better or for worse--I've always been somewhat of a perfectionist.  I can assure you that before I post this blog entry, I will proofread it at least once to weed out any grammatical errors/stylistic issues (Also, I just spent the past 30 seconds looking up the word "proofread" to ensure that it is, in fact, one word and not two...  Uh oh.  Perhaps this is problem is more serious than I had thought...).  I guess that's why I enjoy editing things for people...

With my writing in general, I tend to sit and ponder the best possible sentence structure, and I will often read sentences aloud (but only when I'm alone...if...that makes it any less...deranged...) to determine if they flow smoothly enough.  I frequently reread my writing and change certain words and phrases...only to change them back again moments later.  For this reason, I rarely read over my writing once I've dubbed it "finished"...because, inevitably, I'll be dissatisfied, and I'll want to rewrite everything...

Similarly, I have a sketchbook of drawings that I'll never finish.  Typically, I draw until a certain point, and, then, I find that I can't continue...because I just want to go back and "fix" certain details over and over...and over...and over again.  And where's the fun in that?  Artistic things can easily become a chore for me...because I can so rarely make them "just right."  And if I do force myself to finish them, I can almost guarantee that I'll always regard them with a hint of disappointment: "Ugh.  Look at all the flaws..."

Well, now that I've shared with you a few of my more disgusting tendencies, let me say that this latent (or...perhaps...overt) perfectionism isn't always a bad thing.  It certainly gives me that extra push when I'm working on something (especially when it's sometime around 4 a.m.)--that unrelenting drive to avoid just giving up and saying, "Who cares?  I guess that's good enough."  And, hey, if I ever do manage to meet my unbelievably high standards for my work, I can tell you right now that that is an amazing feeling!

At its core, this obsessive perfectionism probably isn't the best thing in the world...but I know that there's at least some part of me that enjoys it.  There's just something fulfilling (oddly enough) about having an unattainable goal...and knowing that I won't let myself rest until I've at least come close to it.  (So...maybe it's sort of a masochistic, obsessive perfectionism...but that's another issue for another day, I think.)  I mean, if I really hated being a perfectionist, I'm sure I could change it (or...at least that's what I'll tell myself for now).

So, I guess this is the point in the blog entry where I make some sort of resolution to dispell a small portion of this issue.  I mean, I suppose I could start by promising that I won't go back and proofread this blog entry...at the very least!  But, then again, we all know that that just wouldn't be true.

Hello, my name is Andrew Hart, and I'm a perfectionist.