~ these are the flaws of my lives ~
It has been glorious being back in Boise. Except for whatever is creating stress for my immune system. The main issue has been the crazed sneezing and my inability to regulate my temperature. I'm constantly overheated and cold sweaty and feeling on the verge of fainting. But Boise is glorious. Why the rest of the world does not live in this paradise, I will never understand.
At my place of employment, I'm spending all my time working on a creative venture. However, my inspiration is gone for the day. I find myself staring blankly at my computer screen for extended periods of time. The feedback on my preliminary work, however, has been very positive. And I quote: "You are REALLY good! It is awesome!" Also? In super top secret news, there might soon be some fantastic changes to my position. Specifically, I might become Something Else with a new JD. Apparently, this whole "trying to be good at what one does" thing pays off...quite literally.
This leads me into a small discussion about some thoughts I've been having recently about perfection, and how I find that I have conflicting and possibly hypocritical views on perfection. It's something of a complex topic for me, so I'm sure you'll understand and recognize my tendency to ramble with little point.
For starters, when we're talking about my work at my job and school, I am extremely Type A. I am unforgiving and extremely damanding, having high expectations and am easily frustrated and disappointed. I have found, after quite a bit of experience with myself, that this aspect of my personality tends to detract from my ability to have an overall high quality of life. Clearly, it is good to put in one's best effort, but sometimes certain stuff just isn't a big deal and one should go and get a life.
For post-starters, however, I am not much of a perfectionist in other areas of my life. And I ascribe that to my having placed a value on a high quality of life to the detriment of flawlessness. I suppose that in order to articulate a full and complete version of that which I am pondering, I should include a detailed definition of what I consider to be a high quality of life for myself. Don't worry, I won't and we'll all have to be satisfied with my incomplete and vague musings.
Anyway, I've kinda forgotten what I was going to go on about because I'm currently multitasking this insightful whatever with my creative venture and more of my mental energy is on the latter. If memory serves, I was going to point your attention in the direction of certain parts of my life which nitty-picky types might get their panties all sucked up into their sphincters. Like the state of my apartment, which I do a pretty good job at maintaining a general level of tidyness, but which I would not recommend sliding one's tongue along because there's no guarantee when the last time I actually cleaned was. More importantly, however, I wanted to mention something about flaws and imperfections providing my life with interesting amusement. Perfection, after all, can be so dull. If I make something, a sewn skirt or a knitted sweater for examples, or if I fall repeatedly on a mountain bike ride, the cute little imperfections actually make me smile...in a wincing sort of way. Also, I find that I can be exceptionally charming and witty when I discuss my own unimportant mistakes and errors. It's one of my strong points, really. Given my casual attitude about the flaws that make up my existence, it's only natural for me to extend that casual attitude onto others. Since I am such a flawed individual, I certainly wouldn't want to surround myself with people who are the opposite of myself and never make mistakes. Making mistakes, and learning from them, is one of those great things about life. Obviously, I do not refer to mistakes such as shooting someone in the face and learning to take better aim.
Over the weekend, while I was on the airplane flight from New York to Boise, I was reading the UK Marie Clairre fashion magazine and was reading the advice column on how to make one's relationship work. The example dysfunctional couple was composed of this female who is very relaxed and calm about stuff, like me, and this male who is extremely nitty-picky anal retentive about every little thing. Apparently, they drive each other crazy. The male was illustrating this ridiculous pattern of their malfunctioning relationship by way of example of a blanket on a sofa. In his view, the blanket must always be perfectly arranged, without creases, on the sofa, and he regularly sits on the floor to avoid getting creases in the blanket. The female, by contrast, does not view the blanket on the sofa as a form of decoration, and rather understands it as a functional item that can provide her with warmth and comfort while snuggling on the sofa. As you can imagine, the male regularly comes home to find the blanket in disarray on the sofa and has a big cow.
As I view this problem, I see it not so much in terms of their relationship not working, but rather that their world views are juxtaposed in such a way that they might find less integration of their daily lives benefitial to resolving their woes. What I mean is that people who are so different, and have such particular demands, should not live together. There must be some reasons that they are a couple in the first place, and reverting to a state of enjoying eachother rather than faulting eachother may in fact be a recipe for relationship success. So you see, perfection is ridiculous and demanding other people to be perfect is unrealistic. Figuring out a way to enjoy a person that allows you to not hate them might be a good harmonious move so that you can have your blankets ajusted perfectly to your taste and other people can snuggle in their blankets as they like.
Surprisingly, I somehow managed to ramble way off topic from my original intent. Tra-la-la-la-la! ...hrm, I think that I was about to reveal the secret to world peace and total human happiness, but I lost it after becoming distracted by something in the real world. It's weird how I'm in such a fantastic mood during my state of ill feeling. Also, I'm feeling particularly awesome right at this very moment because I'm about to leave work for the day. You'll notice that the time on this post is set at 9:00 this morning...which is because it's taken me all day long in between creativity to compose this piece of brilliance. I must say, I am quite excited about this evening!