I don’t consider myself a perfectionist. My house is not meticulously clean or organized. I don’t match my socks before I put them in the drawer. There are dirty dishes in my sink from last night when I made cookies (and those definitely didn’t turn out perfect, ew). But there are certain things, whether it’s writing or recording a song, or a performance in any setting, when I turn into a complete rain man, obsessing continuously until I’m finished. It’s more than just focus and discipline, which would be normal and healthy. It’s crazy, fanatical, consuming fixation, followed by an overly harsh and judgmental review of myself. I am my biggest critic. I am prone to automatically assuming that performance was awful, that song sounds horrible, or I acted like a complete idiot and they’ll never call me to play for their party again. If I don’t feel like something was a complete success, then I categorize it as a total failure. I don’t know why I do this. My husband bears the brunt of my