perfectionism

so, the dreams have slowed down but haven't really stopped. i started seeing a new therapiste (she's female, so it's therapiste, not therapist, you know), and she suggested that it's very likely that i am finally ready to start dealing with some of the stuff i've been burying, and as a result my unconscious mind is starting to root it up and spit it out because it's finally ok to do so. sounds alright to me, and i'm sure it's better than the alternative (which i gather means swallowing it all continually throughout the remainder of my life until it eventually either explodes and takes me with it or rots me from the inside out) - but it's still exhausting.

frankly, i'm bored with my own brain's inability to be obtuse. we're always reading and hearing about dream interpretation, and how certain things have symbolic meanings that it frequently takes specialists or at least books to muddle our way through, and then even freud admitted that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. but really, my dreams are so glaringly obvious when they even bother to be symbolic at all that it is, honestly, embarrassing. but i suppose that all just reinforces what the therapiste says - must be time to deal with it if i can't even be bothered to codify it.

in any case, in churning through this with the therapiste, it became patently obvious that my underlying, root-cause issue for many of my difficulties (challenges? problems?) is perfectionism. now, those who know me are all sitting and reading this with giant question marks overt heir heads, because i come across as far less than a perfectionist, but there's so much truth to this it was a little painful to hear.

i want things to have discrete results, provable truths, to be right or wrong, black or white, and in the end i prefer it if everything is perfectly lined up and executed to the utmost. when you realize just how impossible perfectionism is, you can see just how paralyzing it can be. roll a massively lacking self image and more than a few pounds of self-loathing on top of that realization, and you have yourself a recipe for never having the confidence to stat anything at all, and for becoming disenchanted with the things one does start before they're ever finished because they're not going right. crap. sounds so terribly familiar i wanted to curl up and quit right there.

and social anxiety? don't even get me started. in sales, there is a thing known as the 'hit rate', essentially the percentage of successful sales made for a volume of calls made. if you're over 10% in most industries, you're superstar. and in real life all our interactions have a hit rate, but we think of them as friends, acquaintances, enemies, or just those who can barely tolerate us. try loading perfectionism into your social requirements and you will desire nothing less than a completely unachievable hit rate of 100%. you want every interaction to go perfectly and to come out the other side with a new best friend. that is never going to happen, so you obsess over what might go wrong. you obsess over what did go wrong. you obsess over what didn't go wrong so you can try to repeat it next time you run up against this person.

what i think makes the most sad about it all is what it may have cost me. i realize this may make little sense, but i do what i do now because of my perceived inability to do what i want to do. i have never wanted to be anything less than creative for a living, to have a consistent outlet for everything inside me that wants to be expressed and to share the beauty or ugliness of that with the rest of the world, be it through visual arts or music. but while i may have some natural ability, i haven't the patience to develop it because it should be perfect already. i have a subconscious impression that everything i attempt should be coming out right and that learning shouldn't be necessary because it means taking imperfect steps. and so i leave myself with a partial ability to do anything creative that is even worthless in and of itself because i won't use it due to its imperfection. now i live in a world of numbers that are provable and discrete. there are right and wrong answers. i exercise some creativity in what i do because there is definitely an art to massaging margins and managing bids, and the handling of salespeople versus product management is an art form all to itself. but in the end, it's not me, and i'm just now beginning to mourn the loss of what i might have been able to do if i didn't just see art and music as having unprovable success rates. in my mind, artistic success translates as sales of work or as being completely satisfied with end products, and i may never have sold a thing and with my current expectations i will never be free to enjoy the satisfaction of looking at my own work and being satisfied with it. that has destroyed my ability to do anything with my desires and left me in a world of numbers.

even now i want nothing more than to spend the rest of the day going over this post to correct everything that is wrong in it. poor word choice here, typo there, that section should be scrapped altogether. that i ever post anything is a bit of a miracle. i do have to go and get in the shower to prepare for work, so instead of revising and editing for rest of the day i will just bury myself in numbers and in the back of my mind wonder about who might be reading this and what they're thinking of it and apologizing to them in my head for all the mistakes in it and for the fact that it really could be so much better written.