I Saw Three Ships

I've noticed that recently I've become somewhat more lachrymose than usual. I've found a number of ordinary things to have a hard-hitting profundity that's taken me to the brink of tears and beyond. I have a feeling that when and if I make it to middle age, I'm just going to be weeping all the time.

I just breezed through an interesting little book called "The Anatomy of Peace" that I picked up at Schuler, it's not something I would buy but the title interested me. It's about resolving conflict, essentially.

Conflict is something I've taken an interest in for some time, being particularly bad at it, and not particularly liking it. The book notes that many times conflict is exacerbated because of what's going on inside of yourself, rather than the other person's actions. Which might be "duh" but it's so true... I made my first mistake at Schuler the other night, at least the first mistake that lead to customer discontent. While in the long run it was not too big of a deal, I let things like that eat at me. In fact, I remember every single mistake I made at Meijer over ten years that lead to confrontation with a customer. And I remember many confrontations that had nothing to do with me, also.

But they all still bother me, and occasionally, I'll lay awake thinking about some thing I might have handled differently eight years ago.

In wondering why that kind of thing eats at me for so long, I determined that it's because they are all examples of my infallibility or lack of knowledge (at the time, anyway). Yes, it bothered me on Saturday that a person had to drive back to the store from 45 minutes away to claim something that I should have made sure was with this person when they left. It bothered me like it would anybody else.

But what bothers me now is that I didn't do what I was supposed to, I was imperfect...made to look stupid, even.

At first you look for other people to blame, and I did, but quickly poked holes in that. You can only blame yourself, and that's a tough thing for a perfectionist to do.

Speaking of perfectionists, there should really be a study done to classify the kind of perfectionist that I and surprisingly many people are: those that have a highly specialized band of perfection demanded. As opposed to those that have to have everything just so. It's an interesting distinction.

Moving on from that somewhat egocentric meditation, not much else is happening out of the ordinary for me. Difficult week of school ahead, pretty much through to the end of the semester. With work now, I feel like I have very little time to prepare for classes and tests. Join the club, right?

Does anybody out there have a copy of Postlethwait's "Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce" they'd be willing to sell me?