On My Completionism

It’s a pain of a personality trait to have. Particularly in relation to my avid consumption of movies, shows, books and various other media. It extends into my habits, too but I’ll address that later. To begin with, though, it has stopped me from watching some supposedly great movies and shows, for no good reason. I feel guilty whenever I consider doing so before reading the book upon which it was based, and I honestly can’t really explain why. It’s rarely the case that there’s a big spoiler or plot twist that would firstly be better to consume as a book, and secondly, one that truly matters enough in the grand scheme of things. My memory’s poor enough as it is, a point that actually works in my favour.

Not to mention that what one gets out of consuming the same stories in different forms is equally as different, and no one experience should be inherently better. I know that as a fact, but rarely, if ever, make decisions according to it. I’m going to rattle through a few more examples of how my completionism has frustrated me, because I can.

As I mentioned, I can’t watch a movie or show unless I’ve read the book it’s based on first. If there’s a show I started watching a while ago but never finished, I have to start from the beginning and work my way through. If I want to read a book I remember enjoying, a book that’s in a series, I have to read all the books that precede, and usually, follow it. I can’t start reading a series of comic books before I have bought all of the books in that series, because I need to know that I can finish it without interruptions. If I want to start listening to a podcast, I feel obligated to go through the entire back catalogue first. You get the idea.

Now that I’ve had the opportunity to rant for a bit, I’ll get to the part that actually matters. Because as much time as I have spent complaining about it in this entry, the way completionism affects my media consumption can only be overridden through sheer force of will. The part that actually matters, though, is how it affects my life at large. I wrote in my last entry about the dark side of my habits – how I feel compelled to maintain them past a reasonable point – and I think that can be partially traced back to my completionism. There’s something I find inherently attractive and superior in the practice of maintaining a habit for a long period of time, without fail. It is when I inevitably break this unreasonable ideal that I lose faith in the habit itself, and come close to abandoning it. It is, through the reasons I outlined yesterday – the compromises to be found – in combination once again with that sheer force of will that I can push past the self-imposed adversity. Sometimes, it feels as though my brain has bet against me getting better, and tries to sabotage its way to victory sometimes, and that it is only through actively fighting against it that I can beat the odds. That’s ridiculous, of course, but a fun metaphor to have in mind.