Compulsive Completion

Joanna describes her com­pletist ten­den­cies as a com­pul­sion. I’ve never con­sid­ered it that. I do it too, but out of a love for immer­sion, not because of my OCD. I’ll catch a song or hear a name, and I’ll run home top open Kazaa(or equiv­a­lent) and down­load every com­plete and prop­erly file-named song I can find. I did this for David Gray, years ago and before he hit the US, Damien Rice months ago after a TV appear­ance, Cursive just the other night because of Joanna’s end­less praise. I’ll read an essay, an excerpt, a novel, and run to the libraries to check-out the entire collection.

I don’t think of this as obses­sive com­pul­sive behav­ior, not truly. Okay, maybe a lit­tle, from an objec­tive view. But the spirit of it isn’t in that stan­dard train of “eep, those pic­tures are not sym­met­ri­cal, nor are they uneven enough to be prop­erly asym­met­ri­cal! must! fix!” Rather, I want to be immersed in the words and sounds of what­ever the Topic is. This pro­vides a clear, almost san­i­tary envi­ron­ment for my deci­sion. Or, some­times I’ll just love some­thing and want more more more.

I do this for crafts, too, by the way. or polit­i­cal the­o­ries. or, everything.

I’m back­track­ing now to say that I rec­og­nize that clas­sic OCD trait of want­ing to con­trol my envi­ron­ment. I still don’t think that this is some­thing I want to rid myself of. If noth­ing else, I end up with a num­ber of curi­ous specialties.

I won­der if this process of com­pletist immer­sion is a schol­arly trait. That desire to learn/experience/get more more more until all is had and processed and taken up into ourselves.