You might have already guessed that I am a perfectionist. It think it shows, the way this place looks and feels, they way I write even. I like tidy things. Neat things. Ordered things, all within my own reason and criteria. Most of my efforts at improving my life have to do with such order. Order with material things, with my study and schedule, with my intentions, words and deeds.

I fear, however, that sometimes I am a bit too perfectionist. I try to put order into things that cannot be ordered, and generally make a mess in the process. It is with good intention, after all order cannot be bad. But maybe too much order can be.

This is especially true when it comes to (some of) the things that I love most: music, movies and series. I don’t just “watch a movie.” I wait three months for the perfect moment when the stars align so I can use the TV at home on a night in which I can stay up until late, starting at an specific time and with an specific brand of popcorn with special secret ingredients that I put into them, and after finishing (and possibly crying a bunch) I log it into my list of watched movies with an specific formatting based on my thoughts at the moment, which will be revised a week later for contrast. I don’t just “listen to a new song.” I create a playlist with every song from that artist in an specific ordering schema with priorities to get the maximum amount of cover art, and I listen to them sequentially and get the ones I like into my perfectly crafted playlists.

Too much, isn’t it?

Normally this kind of order is not rigid to me. After all, I was the one that crafted the system. But it can be suffocating at times. I don’t get to watch many movies, since the perfect moment is quite rare. I don’t get to listen to new music freely, I need time to organize the new music and to fit it into my playlists. And the real problem is that it is hard for me to accept that some things are a bit more chaotic, especially concerning feelings.

And I think I have the reason for all this. You see, I care a lot. I love this movies, those series, that music. They hold a lot of emotional importance. They are part of my personality and history. In fact, my playlists are ordered exclusively chronically. They are a view into my past and present. And movies and series have marked important moments of my life that I hold very dear. And since I care a lot about them, they must be in perfect form. They must represent that which I see them representing.

That also constrains me. Knowing the next good movie I see might mark my life so makes me want to make that moment perfect, knowing full well that the best moments are the ones I don’t microengineer but trying to do so anyway.

It’s a paradox, a fish that bites its own tail. I hope I’ll someday be able to find a solution.