Joined: Sep 22, 2013 Posts: 5419 Location: somewhere btwn Achilles and the tortoise
Preferred Pronoun Set: ♀
This past weekend, I worked for three whole days on The YMtC Hall of Fame. I spent the first day just tallying the leaderboard in Google Docs. The next two days were spent formatting and organizing over three hundred cards. Keeping tracks of all the streaks, making sure everything was in chronological order, and not losing anything thru all the copying and pasting took an inordinate amount of work.
One of the things I did was make minor edits to formatting. For example, Mown and BelangiaJo indent all their cards. I removed all of these indentations to improve the scrolling scansion of the thread as a whole. Q made a minor formatting error on Killer Rats, so I fixed it. Libe made renders for Eavesdropping, Binding Array, Penumbra Druid, Reckless Archaeology, Wayfinder Wisps, and Kizzik, Firemind's Favored, so I linked to those in the title of the card like a [c][/c] tag. The biggest challenge was Mown's Resolute Bladehound, whose beauty only makes sense in the context of the prompt for the contest it was designed for. I did my best to include the render in the card name like with Libe's, and linked the relevant card link in the flavor text, which was harder than it sounds because of how card tags work.
I obsessed over it. This thread had to be perfect.
One of the things I obsess over is "Edited" tags. These work differently across sites—Facebook's is the most brutal, keeping record of every single past version of the comment and allowing no grace period for edits at all. Reddit has a flat grace period of 3 minutes in which you can edit your comment as much as you want. These boards have a system I've never seen anywhere else, but which I'm very partial to, namely that you can edit as much as you want, for as long as you want, as long as it's the last post in the thread.
No matter which site I'm on, I do whatever I have to do to avoid the edited tag at all costs. On Facebook, if I find a typo, I delete the comment altogether and repost it. On Reddit, I literally set a timer for three minutes and go to town. But these boards are different. On these boards, evading the edited tag depends not on time, but on other people—as long as my threads and posts go unnoticed, I can edit as much as I want. Which can be very dangerous for a perfectionist like me.
When I posted the Hall of Fame thread, I immediately noticed two aberrations: Rush_Clasic's Sprawling Pipeline and JV's Shadow of Lichpeak had hanging [/indent] tags. (They were each the last in a series of cards they had indented, so I'd had no opening [indent] tag to indicate I had to remove them.) Hanging [indent], [quote], and [sblock] tags can ruin a thread.
I sprung into action. I edited the thread in a flurry, rushing to cleanse the thread of those imperceptible errors before anyone commented.
With the Pipeline and the Peak fixed, I gazed at my thread in satisfaction. I spent fifteen minutes triple- and quadruple-checking to make sure there was nothing wrong.
That's when I saw it.
The last card in the whole thread, Flopfoot's Breakable Cage, was a Planeswalker. There was nothing particularly unique about this card out of all its 300+ fellows, except that by the way I formatted the thread, it just so happened to be the very last one. People tend to remember the first and last items in a list far more than anything in the middle, so I thought it was important that this card look good.
Flopfoot had used a plain "4" to indicate the card's loyalty, instead of using the [pw][/pw] tags to make it "". I decided if I had sprung to action with Q's Rats (I debated doing even that for several minutes, as I really tried to meddle as little as possible), surely it would not be too much of an imposition to add a [pw][/pw] to my final card.
So I soft-deleted the dedication to TP (you have to soft-delete all your posts that come after the one you're trying to edit if you don't want the edited mark to show up) and set down the path that would lead to my own destruction: I edited Flopfoot's post. I added the .
And the blasted mark appeared. "Last edited by ParadOxymoron on Sun Aug 28, 2022 9:54 pm, edited 1 time in total." Unbeknownst to me, razorborne had commented at 9:52. If I had ignored the plain 4, been two minutes faster, or even been two minutes slower (as I wouldn't have been able to soft-delete the TP dedication if razor had already posted), this wouldn't have happened.
I welcome that first mistake. Then I can shrug it off and go on with the performance and turn off that part of my mind that judges everything. The part of your brain that judges everything could care less about connection. Its main concern is self. In order to tell good stories and communicate, we have to switch it off. Let it go, make that first mistake and move on. Make people care about what comes next and allow yourself to forget the mistake that no one noticed but you. It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be told.
I've been struggling with perfectionism all my life. Before I started kindergarten, I became convinced that if I didn't do everything in sets of four, I would suffer eternal damnation. I walked in sets of four—left, right, left, right. I chewed in sets of four—chew with the left molars, move the food in my mouth over to the right and chew again, and back, and forth. I looked for four everywhere I went, dividing everything I saw into fourths, doing everything I did more than once exactly four times, swallowing in four gulps at a time whenever I drank anything. I even memorized all the powers of four up to 4096, and I hadn't even turned 10 yet. There's a word for this: arithmomania.
Though I've never been able to shake the stepping left-right-left-right thing, especially when I go up stairs, the other more debilitating aspects of my obsession have largely faded over time. But the pattern of behavior itself still carries over in other ways, especially on a place like these boards where a stray ] can obliterate an entire post.
I wrote something. It's 550 pages long. It's a screenplay for a television show I want to produce. I finished it several weeks ago, on July 8th of this year. It's been sitting on my desk ever since.
When we recorded Stan I worked with a couple different engineers but this particular engineer I had never worked with before. While we were recording the third verse of Stan, he started rolling a joint and asked me if I minded if he smoked while we cut. What was I gonna do? Say no? He was already rolling it so I told him “no problem”. Everything was cool and I had gotten all the way to the last 3 lines and I screwed up so all he had to do was punch in my vocals at the end so I could re-do that line and the verse was finished. Back then we were recording on 2 inch tape, so once you recorded over something it’s gone forever. So I’m in the booth waiting and he backs the tape up all the way to the beginning of the verse and punches me in. I realize he’s in the wrong spot and I can’t hear any of my vocals so I start waving my arms and yelling in the mic to try to get his attention. He doesn’t notice so I run into the control room through a cloud of smoke and yell “Yo, I wanted to keep those vocals” he just looked at me and said “My bad man…you wanna hit this?”
The first half of the verse was GONE. I re-recorded it but you should have heard the original take that **** was WAY better…oh well!
I'm going back to college today. I actually have to leave in less than an hour, so I should be getting dressed and taking a shower instead of writing this post, but I need to get this off my chest before I go. I'm 30 years old, and haven't been to school in years.
I have a lot of problems with perfectionism in school. When I miss a single assignment, I say "**** it" and miss the next five too. When I'm five minutes late to class, I beat myself up like I'd just missed the whole class entirely. I berate myself for every misstep in the way I compose myself and participate in class. I take it very seriously. My psychiatrist says I have PTSD from all the times college went poorly for me.
I'm excited to start school again, I really am. I love school. I'm very good at it when I put my mind to it.
Many will at once ask, “How can we accept the entire implications of Step Six? Why—that is perfection!” This sounds like a hard question, but practically speaking, it isn't. Only Step One, where we made the 100 percent admission we were powerless over alcohol, can be practiced with absolute perfection. The remaining eleven Steps state perfect ideals. They are goals toward which we look, and the measuring sticks by which we estimate our progress. Seen in this light, Step Six is still difficult, but not at all impossible. The only urgent thing is that we make a beginning, and keep trying.
I'm sober. I'm coming up on five years clean next month. I go to AA meetings a lot. Yesterday morning, the topic was Step 6. "Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character." What does that mean? ALL these defects of character? ALL of them? ENTIRELY ready?
On the morning of a day embroiled in perfectionism, I sat with a bunch of alcoholics in the back of a church rectory and talked about what it meant to be perfect.
[Stan went on to be] nominated for multiple awards, including Best Song at the MTV Europe Music Awards, Video of the Year, Best Rap Video, Best Direction, and Best Cinematography at the MTV Video Music Awards. It won Best International Artist Video at the MuchMusic Video Awards. In April 2011, Complex magazine put together a list of the 100 greatest Eminem songs and ranked "Stan" second.[3] The eponymous character's name gave rise to a slang term that refers to overzealous, maniacal, overly obsessed, entitled fans of a celebrity or personality; the term has since been included in the Oxford English Dictionary.[4]
No one noticed the Flopfoot edit until I pointed it out here. The Hall of Fame has received nothing but a positive reaction so far.
It's not the end of the world if I take a break from my manuscript for a couple of months after working on it so hard for so many years. I will get back to it.
School is going to be hard, but my train leaves at 3:03, and it's 1:55 now, so it's going to happen whether I like it or not. Someday I will graduate, and all my toil will have been worth it. And along the way I'll make great friends and learn much and more about the world, the people in it, and myself.
Coming up on 5 years sober is giving me anniversary anxiety. But like anything else, sobriety is one day at a time.
And today, I don't have to be perfect.
Perfection — Enchantment Creature — Fractal Incarnation (R) Hexproof When you lose life, discard a card, mill a card, or become the target of a spell or ability an opponent controls, sacrifice Perfection. 8/8
And the blasted mark appeared. "Last edited by ParadOxymoron on Sun Aug 28, 2022 9:54 pm, edited 1 time in total." Unbeknownst to me, razorborne had commented at 9:52. If I had ignored the plain 4, been two minutes faster, or even been two minutes slower (as I wouldn't have been able to soft-delete the TP dedication if razor had already posted), this wouldn't have happened.
I'm sorry! honestly I'd been waiting to comment 'cause I didn't want to interrupt your list, so as soon as I saw you were done I left it right away.
that said, won't you have to edit posts anyway if someone gets another CotW? or is the intent for it to just remain a static record of this exact moment in time?
Sometimes when I make a mistake, my brain shuts down, and instead of being able to carry on with whatever I was doing, I feel trapped in a combination of hating myself and wishing I could go back in time to avoid making the mistake in the first place. There's a certain unwillingness to accept that I now live in a world where I failed to meet my own expectations.
Also, when I was growing up, my older sister struggled with alcoholism. I was never that close with her then, but after she got sober, she reached out to reconnect, and we've been much closer ever since. Now she's 13 years sober, and I'm so proud of her for the new life she's built for herself.
I would never presume to understand exactly what you're going through, Parad, but I sympathize. It sounds like you've done a lot of work to make a better life for yourself, which I appreciate, even as a random stranger on a forum for made-up Magic cards. Thanks for being a part of this community!
Joined: Mar 14, 2015 Posts: 2346
Preferred Pronoun Set: he/him
I totally get that mentality, Parad! Growing up in purity culture made the concept of making a mistake horribly intimidating and embarrassing. Perfectionism is baked into my mindset too.
We all love you for everything you do here, and the Hall of Fame thread is such a beautiful gift you've given to the forum. Thank you for caring about this random group of internet nerds!
Oh my god, totally don't worry about it. I found more errors later in Rush's and JV's pages anyway, so it was just accelerating the inevitable. I'm glad it inspired me to write this post. I really needed to talk about it, and it was a great note to start my classes on.
Speaking of which, they wouldn't let me on campus because I hadn't uploaded my proof-of-vaccination to their database yet! I had my vaccination card in my hand!! Once I finally got everything straight, I was able to get into the building, but I was 20 minutes late to my first class. Progress not perfection!
that said, won't you have to edit posts anyway if someone gets another CotW? or is the intent for it to just remain a static record of this exact moment in time?
I'd meant for it to be a static record of this exact moment in time, but now that you mention it, it really wouldn't be a big deal for me to update it once a week going forward. No promises, but I'll do so for as long as I can. I'll also see what I can do about getting the thread stickied.
Sometimes when I make a mistake, my brain shuts down, and instead of being able to carry on with whatever I was doing, I feel trapped in a combination of hating myself and wishing I could go back in time to avoid making the mistake in the first place. There's a certain unwillingness to accept that I now live in a world where I failed to meet my own expectations.
Also, when I was growing up, my older sister struggled with alcoholism. I was never that close with her then, but after she got sober, she reached out to reconnect, and we've been much closer ever since. Now she's 13 years sober, and I'm so proud of her for the new life she's built for herself.
I would never presume to understand exactly what you're going through, Parad, but I sympathize. It sounds like you've done a lot of work to make a better life for yourself, which I appreciate, even as a random stranger on a forum for made-up Magic cards. Thanks for being a part of this community!
Thank you so much for this. Reading this made my day. I'm so glad your sister was able to build a better life for herself and reconnect with you! Getting back into the good graces of one's family is often one of the greatest gifts of sobriety I hear people talk about.
I totally get that mentality, Parad! Growing up in purity culture made the concept of making a mistake horribly intimidating and embarrassing. Perfectionism is baked into my mindset too.
Yeah, I had to google "purity culture" just now but it sounds like quite the mind ****. I'm so sorry you had to go through that! I hope we can both learn to make mistakes with grace and dignity together.
We all love you for everything you do here, and the Hall of Fame thread is such a beautiful gift you've given to the forum. Thank you for caring about this random group of internet nerds!
Aww, shucks. This means more to me than you know. Thank you so much!
Before I started kindergarten, I became convinced that if I didn't do everything in sets of four, I would suffer eternal damnation.
do you ensure that you take instances of four steps in a uniquely shaped area on the ground before entering a new "domain" if you touch a surface do you touch it again or otherwise interact with it in a way to convince yourself that you have been in contact with it four times, whatever that entails when listening to people speak or reading subtitles do you break down their sentences to ensure that the number of character is divisible by fours, and do you sometimes include punctuation or break up contractions to get peace of mind just wondering since I've obviously never had it myself and I couldn't begin to imagine what it's like
do you ensure that you take instances of four steps in a uniquely shaped area on the ground before entering a new "domain"
When I focus on it, I try to step exactly twice in each square on the sidewalk so that I'm always stepping into the next square with my left foot. Similarly with crosswalks, I always step on the white lines (which can be difficult as I'm rather short and they're sometimes far apart). I absolutely do this when I'm pacing on patterned carpets. It upsets me when stairs have an odd number of steps, because it disrupts this ritual.
if you touch a surface do you touch it again or otherwise interact with it in a way to convince yourself that you have been in contact with it four times, whatever that entails
Yes. I mean not always but yes. I especially do this with railings and the walls of elevators. If I do it only once it's usually fine, but two or three times has to be repeated until it's a multiple of four.
when listening to people speak or reading subtitles do you break down their sentences to ensure that the number of character is divisible by fours, and do you sometimes include punctuation or break up contractions to get peace of mind
No, but I do this when I'm writing. I've noticed there are four lines in your post, for example. There are four sacrifice clauses in the Perfection card I posted. But the former might be a coincidence, and the latter wasn't consciously intentional.
When I focus on it, I try to step exactly twice in each square on the sidewalk so that I'm always stepping into the next square with my left foot. Similarly with crosswalks, I always step on the white lines (which can be difficult as I'm rather short and they're sometimes far apart). I absolutely do this when I'm pacing on patterned carpets. It upsets me when stairs have an odd number of steps, because it disrupts this ritual.
I feel this in my bones. I have a natural obsession with taking the last step of a flight of stairs with my right foot, so I memorize the number of steps in flights of stairs I use often so I know which foot and each stair to start on, depending on if I'm going up or down (I take stairs two at a time if I'm going up, one at a time if I'm going down). When going up, if there's an even number of stairs, I start on the second stair; if there's an odd number, I start on the first stair.
I also used to be obsessed with starting each square of sidewalk with my right foot and would get frustrated when squares of sidewalk were different lengths. That would mean I'd have to take longer or shorter steps to make sure I'd start the next square on my right foot, or awkwardly take two steps in a row with the same foot.
Joined: Sep 25, 2013 Posts: 14140 Location: Kamloops, BC
Identity: Male
This reply has been a long time coming. I may have serious procrastination issues. It may say something that I'm typing this while on hold with the tax man. I see a post that looks important and I open a tab, then I build up the importance of replying until it's too late to do anything. I never did things in 4's but I obsessed pretty hard over keeping things even. Grind my teeth on one side? Got to even that out. For a long time I couldn't sleep unless I thought there was an equal length of quilt hanging over either side of the bed. Why didn't anybody nominated Perfection for CotW? Did you all wait until
*"To YMTC it up" means to design cards that have value mostly from a design perspective. i.e. you would put them in a case under glass in your living room and visitors could remark upon the wonderful design principles, with nobody ever worring if the cards are annoying/pointless/confusing in actual play
Joined: Sep 22, 2013 Posts: 5419 Location: somewhere btwn Achilles and the tortoise
Preferred Pronoun Set: ♀
I got two A+'s.
The Winter semester starts today. Math in Everyday Life. I have to leave for the train in 22 minutes. 3 hours a day, 4 days a week, for 4 weeks. Very intense for me. I don't think I can do it. But I'm going to be on that train.
Joined: Sep 22, 2013 Posts: 5419 Location: somewhere btwn Achilles and the tortoise
Preferred Pronoun Set: ♀
Aaaaaaand I dropped it. Walked out 40 minutes into a 3-hour lecture. Everyday Life my ass. Five minutes in and he's showing us a 4-variable equation for calculating compound interest. As Sarah Lynn would say, "That's too much, man!"
This means I won't be able to apply in the Fall for a scholarship that you need at least 60 credits to qualify for. I'll probably put off going full-time for another year. This pushes my graduation schedule back from '25 to '26. Which is what my advisor advised me to shoot for anyway.
College is exhausting. I can't believe I'm still not even halfway through. How do kids do this?
Late replying to this, and while I want to vent myself because I am at such a low point in my life but dont feel I have anyone I can trust to talk with, rereading your experiences regarding perfectionism--especially the part regarding AA and taking things one day at a time--helped me realize how much I have been wallowing in my own self despair and looking to satiating my own gaming addiciton as a form of escapism.
Thank you Parad for sharing this with everyone, as well as for all that you have contributed to this community as a whole.
I find it weird that "Perfection" (Perfectionism?) is bant and not esper. Green is the color of balance, equilibrium, and more importantly tranquil inner peace - accepting one's fate and place in the world and so on. Black feels much more appropriate for things like compulsive obsessive behaviour and is also the color of self improvement alongside blue. Black is also associated with the loosely associated masochistic, self-punitive themes.
I think the esper shard highlights this focus on perfection well, which demands utter control. Etherium itself is a manifestation of this compulsive self-improvement reaching for the best possible self.
Quote:
Esper is a world where purpose and control have triumphed over savagery and chaos. Bereft of red and green mana, this plane's natural forces pale next to the supernatural power of its human and vedalken mages. Under the foresight of Esper's ruling sphinxes, the plane has transformed from wilderness to a tightly-controlled magocracy. Human and vedalken mages control almost every aspect of life here, from the tides and winds to its inhabitants. The most interesting thing of note about Esper is the omnipresence of the aether-infused filigree metal known as etherium. The inhabitants use it to improve their skills and life spans.
The Master held his palms aloft. "Behold my wounds," said He. The onlookers observed the cauterization and the sunlight that shone through His great hands... "Let there be pain." —The Book of Cataclysm, Syndicate Wars Deck lists (tappedout.net) Bunch more of my designs!
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". I decided if I had sprung to action with Q's Rats (I debated doing even that for several minutes, as I really tried to meddle as little as possible), surely it would not be too much of an imposition to add a [pw][/pw] to my final card.
Thanks for being a part of this community!
