Full disclosure: Michael and I have a rule. We allow ourselves to buy “crappy” magazines (go ahead and judge) when we travel — train, airplane, bus, camel, etc. — we get an Us or Star magazine and ogle the disorders of the stars. Why? Maybe it’s a nice break from reality. Maybe it’s a “fashion dos and don’ts” fix. Maybe it’s just frivolous idiocy. Whatever.
So last Friday I was at Penn Station with 30 minutes to kill before boarding a train. I walked over to the Hudson News to get my “fix” when I espied the cover of Psychology Today. Three out of the four cover articles (not dentists surveyed) called out my name: A+ or Bust: How Perfectionism Undermines Success, The Obsessive’s Revenge: Making Quirks Work, Desperate Love: When Neediness Strikes (this one because I run for the hills at the scent of it…) I broke the cycle and bought this magazine and was not disappointed.
A few things I learned:
1. Dreams unfold at close to real-life speed. They seem so long, perhaps, because your brain constructs a fictional backstory to provide context – false memories, basically – and later you assume that this story, too, played out in the span of the dream. (Excerpted from the article “Time Flies” by Matthew Hutson)
2. Lexicographer Erin McKean, who is the chief consulting editor of American Dictionaries, hates the word “irregardless.”
3. According to Miriam Adderholdt, author of Perfectionism: What’s Bad About Being Too Good?, excellence involves enjoying what you’re doing, feeling good about what you’ve learned, and developing confidence. Perfection involves feeling bad about a 98 (remember those?) and always finding mistakes no matter how well you’re doing. The article goes on to state that “the truly subversive aspect of perfectionism is that it leads people to conceal their mistakes.”
Gee, I wish I read this article, oh, 20 years ago. That would have been helpful. However, the next article, about using OCPD to your advantage was heartening:
Check this out: “Obsessions and compulsions drove the English language’s three most famous lexicographers – Samuel Johnson, Noah Webster and Peter Roget. Roget, a British doctor who completed his legendary Thesaurus at the age of 73, began compiling copious word lists when he was just 8. Much later, he organized his whole life into a list, dubbing his autobiography List of Principal Events.“
Maybe that’s why I’m blogging…
xx
