Part-time Perfectionist
Michael Jordan: Part-Time Perfectionist
I’m a part-time perfectionist. In college, I won a ton of scholastic accolades from various departments. I was promoted to editor in chief of a University of California campus newspaper in the fastest time ever of the publication’s recent history. I was a founding father of a fraternity chapter–yup–and left it as the university’s largest organization. And I figured out what drink I’d order at a bar (Tom Collins, light on the sour) and dated enough good looking women to ward off the curse of ineptitude that plagues people that seem to DO instead of just simply TALK about doing.
I earned a couple of degrees and some memories, sure, but it was my perfection of the hustle that I’ll forever take away.
At varying times, I was invested–obsessed–with certain tasks. When it came to being EIC, every nuance of the newspaper was important. With girls and fraternity, I threw myself in the throws fully. In regards to academics, I especially shined for a while. And often, I got to the top of whatever I was working towards rather quickly and easily.
Somebody called me a “perfectionist” because of that today. But I don’t think I really am fully. Just part-time.
See, none of those things really happened simultaneously. I couldn’t handle that. Each task was started and I couldn’t do anything until it was completely done, until everything that I could possibly do had been exhausted. I was a perfectionist, but only to what I was completely invested. The other things often suffered. When I was nearing graduation, with my eye on my job and moving away, everything at school suffered.
Does that disqualify me as a perfectionist? I’m not sure, but I know I was trying to perfect something else entirely. Was Michael Jordan forfeiting his reputation as a perfectionist when he dropped basketball and failed miserably at being a Chicago White Sox (Sock?)? Bob Greene summed up His Airness on ESPN Classic’s SportsCentury series:
Jordan said, ‘A lot of times I’ll dream I’m a bad alcoholic and I can’t stop drinking and embarrassing myself. And I’m going to lose everything. I wake up from that dream in a sweat.’ He knows that one slip up, one mistake, can throw it all away. And I think he lived in terror of that for a very long time.
I live with that fear that I might fail. But I know I can’t succeed at everything. The thing is, people typically only seem to remember the good things I do, that reputation resume, and I come out looking like some well-balanced all-star.
I am a perfectionist with only the task at hand; everything else is not just secondary, but completely rendered irrelevant until the first task is flawlessly executed.
I’m a perfectionist only some of the time. Does that mean that I am never one?
Filed under: Experience | 2 Comments
Tags: chicago white sox, lessons, michael jordan, perfectionist, reputation resume, UC Riverside
Adolescence has been, for me, a long struggle with this very challenge: doing everything I possibly can to avoid failure. And from that, I guess I have had what could be deemed inadvertent success — I did not necessarily set out to do something great, but once I got started, I simply could not let go.
Striking that balance, though, is what I am trying to focus on now. We’re at different points in our lives, as I am heading off to college in the fall and you appear well past that stage, but I want to keep everything open, all opportunities available. And I suppose I have that desire because I am terrified of falling too deeply into any one task, and losing everything else I have gained in other regards.
You can toy with examples and scenarios all day, some proving and others disproving whether or not you are in fact a perfectionist… you certainly seem self-aware enough that the title hardly matters. Your resume stands strong, and for that, you should be proud.