I’ve got some perfectionism issues mixed in with what I would diagnose as (playing a doctor on TV as I do) a SMALL amount of OCD. I’ve always known this but sometimes the signs smack you in the head like a 2′ x 4′.
I’ve been decorating my house the past few days for the holidays. As I was looking around my house yesterday before I was done, with half-empty bins and their lids strewn about, with some tissue paper thrown in for good measure, with various incarnations of Santa and snowmen lying on the floor like the Gettysburg Battlefield, I mentioned to my husband that I had “way too much stuff”. His response, “Well, you always do everything in a big way. Just like the cookies.” I started to deny it and then I thought of the 1,500 cookies we made batter for AND baked in a 4-day period last weekend and then what really could I say?
Later last night, I was saying to my husband that some people put their decorations up exactly the same way every year. I tend to wing it although I know the general area where everything belongs.
This morning I went on my computer and checked the “My Pictures” file and looked at last Christmas. Lo, the angels said, I had taken pictures of my decorations last year. But I’m sure that I took them for enjoyment purposes, not for some deep-seeded need to have everything the same way this year as last year.
I do admit my philosophy, after don’t dip your pen in company ink is, if you’re not going to do it right or do it in a big way, why do it at all?
If you apply this to my job search, you can see how a perfectionist like me has a problem with how it’s been going. I do it in a big way, just like everything else, and yet it’s never finished. I’m always having to tweak a resume here, redo a cover letter there but never can bring the project to a close.
I am many things, hopefully, such as loyal and loving and funny and caring. And I am a perfectionist. Just like the 28 sticks of butter and over 3 dozen eggs that went into all those cookies, it’s all part of the recipe that’s me.
