If anyone were ever permitted to see inside my apartment, branding myself a “perfectionist” would seem like a huge joke.
But:
The overwhelming urge to acquire, along with its correlated underlying motivations, can easily be intertwined with a tendency toward perfectionism, as laid out in Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things by Randy O. Frost and Gail Steketee. After all, perfectionism isn’t solely about a pristine, unassailable end result; it also speaks to a sense of wholeness and completion. Within the various case studies the authors lay out, several remarks illustrate this:
“Also affecting Irene’s buying was her addiction to the idea of opportunity… ‘When I gaze at all the riches, I say to myself, ‘Look at all these newspapers and magazines. Somewhere in the midst of all that there may be a piece of information that could change my life; that could make me into the person I want to be. How can I walk away and let that opportunity pass?’”
“Certainly, kleptomania and compulsive buying are related to the acquisition we see in hoarding. What may unite these disorders is a psychology of opportunity. Walking away from something that could be acquired means walking away from the potential benefits of ownership. Most of us learn that any action we take means pursuing one opportunity at the expense of another. For people afflicted with this problem, the fear of losing an opportunity is greater than the reward of taking advantage of one. Consequently, all opportunities are preserved, but none are pursued.”
“She wanted to know the world, ‘to learn everything, to experience everything.’ As she got older, her collecting expanded to include travel, cooking, news and women’s magazines. There were always new magazines with more for her to learn. Before long, she was spending more time collecting than reading. As with many people who hoard, she planned to read them when she found time, but she couldn’t afford to miss what was coming her way…”
“She possessed all the characteristics we had been observing in other hoarders: perfectionism, indecision, and powerful beliefs about and attachments to objects…things represented opportunity and a chance to experience all that life had to offer.”
I relate to this, as my hoarded belongings—specifically books/magazines and clothing—can be viewed as a [flimsy] stand-in for all the information and identities I can never hope to obtain or live out in reality.
And when it comes to attempting to address out-of-control clutter, many hoarders find it “easier to live with the mess than to experience the frustration of failing to create a perfect room.”
So… how is this relevant? I am a Girlboss™ of Great Beginnings, of making a resolution and taking the tiniest first step toward its achievement, almost always discouraged by a lack of immediate, colossal success. (This concept of “success” is invariably rather vague, all the better to convince myself I’ve failed to reach it, no matter what.) As such, in addition to the material objects I’ve compulsively amassed, I have also accumulated a treasure chest/dumpster fire of ideas and theses, introductory paragraphs, sonnet snippets, etc. It took me nearly a full fucking year to meticulously conclude On Envy, and that’s only because, eventually, I stopped myself from following the rest of the strands of thought that were percolating.
This blog—a 2-decades-later resurrection, if you will, or won’t, of my middle school Xanga, i _ am _ a _ loser _ baby—is intended as a place to experiment with less in-depth, more frequent writings. It is yet another facet of my recent efforts to [slowly, painstakingly] uncouple my creative products from the external validation I’ve convinced myself I need for any piece to feel finalized. Yes, I’m aware that I am still posting this to the Internet, but that stems from my perennial yearning for a sense of “community” I’ve never known…
Stay tuned for more on that, and other things.