C is for Completionist

As a participant in the A to Z Blogging Challenge, I will be making my way through the alphabet all month.

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I have a sickness. It's something that developed in my pre-teens and I've never been able to get past it. I'm a collector. Specifically, a set collector.

This means that if I have more than one of something, I have to have the entire set. Something is missing from my life if I don't have every one of them. My earliest memories of this involved McDonald's Happy Meals. The Happy Meals always include a toy. It was usually come cheap little trinket, but whatever you got was usually one of four possible toys. It wasn't enough for me to have the toy I had, I "needed" to have the others as well. This wasn't about greed. I just had to complete the set.

A small portion of my collection.
I still have these today.

Years later when I started buying things for myself, I got caught up in buying music. Like many people, if I heard a song or group that I liked, I bought the album (I never bought singles). But having that music that I liked wasn't enough. I had to own every single album they ever recorded. I didn't discover Van Halen until they released 1984. I loved that album until I discovered they had been around since 1978 and released four albums before that one. I had to have them to stop the pain in my soul.

I've since learned that the correct term for this is being a completist.

 

This is definitely me. I have to try every flavor of Mt Dew even if I only like the original. I need entire movie collections, even if the third one sucked (Beverly Hills Cop). If I find an author I like, I have to read everything they ever wrote before I can move onto another one. If I only own two properties of a color in Monopoly, I will let you do unspeakable things to me in order to acquire that third property. It's a sickness. I have to have it to make the shouting in my head quiet down.

Sometimes, it takes the fun out of what is supposed to be a enjoyable activity. Take video games, for example.

I have done this exact thing! It takes me forever to beat a video game because I don't feel like I am getting the entire experience if I don't complete everything. I have found every single flag in Assassin's Creed and those things are not easy to find. I spent literally hundreds of hours just meticulously canvasing the entire map to ensure that none were left behind. Until my stats can show that I have a 100% completion on a game, it has not been beaten. For the Grand Theft Auto franchise, this takes years.

Although, this trait isn't all drawbacks. It does have its advantages. My wife is grateful for my completionist attitude when it comes to foreplay. I make sure to cover everything.