About a year ago, I was informed that I am a perfectionist. This came as a great surprise.
Up to that point, I would have never considered myself a perfectionist, at least not by my traditional standard of success: grades. As a rule of thumb, I never got good grades. Ever. To this day, I am a "C" student. Not average, just "C". Also, I don't do a lot of work in general, and by "work" I mean "projects". I'm even limited in scope regarding some of my favorite hobbies, such as D&D and board games. None of this really seemed like perfectionist behavior to me.
However, it does when I ask why. Why do I do these things? Why am I a C student? Why do I do so little work? Why do a only run one D&D campaign when my friends clearly want me to run more? Why do I only own a few board games despite enjoying playing them so much?
The answer is because, consciously or no, I want to do the best I can at everything I do, and everything that can't be done excellently is not worth doing. Assignments aren't worth doing if they can't be done excellently. Board games aren't worth playing if I can't play them to the best of my ability. And this goes double for D&D. I don't want to run a half-assed campaign. I pour my soul into my D&D games, and I always want my players to have the best experience possible.
This also has huge drawbacks. I spend more time contemplating what I want to do than actually doing it. I'm always, always considering what the best word, phrase, work, or title might be. Even this blog post underwent several mental revisions before I started writing it; I may not mull over every sentence, but I considered the title and content for a few hours before I started writing. Often times, my schoolwork doesn't get completed because it just isn't good enough to pass mental examination. I'll contemplate for hours, even days, what I should write, what I should work on, and what I want the final product to be, but if I deem it too base or beyond my scope, I simply won't be able to get past the planning stage. There is a window that schoolwork needs to fall into for me to bother to get it done. Too simple or tedious, and I can't be bothered. Too complex or involved, and I won't be able to do it excellently.
It's interesting to consider that, a year ago, I would never have really considered this. I never asked "why" I did or did not do particular schoolwork. The answer was just "anxiety". But no, there's so much more to it than that. I want to do work to the best of my ability, the absolute best. But it's tough to give it my all all the time. I often find that my basic motivation of simply getting work done chafes against my instinct to do the best work possible. It kills me. And it's killing my grades.
But it does make for some great games of D&D.
