Should

A small but sometimes annoying manifestation of this is that I periodically go through a phase where I read a book that I feel I "ought to" read. History books, or fiction books, or nonfiction books that apparently discuss some topic I feel I ought to know, either because educated people just know these things, or because it seems like it might be of practical value. Sometimes I come across a book I bought several years ago and figure I ought to read it because, well, I've got it.

Unsurprisingly, it's rarely the case that I enjoy these books, and almost always the case that when I read something that I want to read that I'll enjoy it more. For instance, though I've had little gripes about Dorothy Sayers' Gaudy Night, I'm reading it because I watched Mystery! two weeks ago and, having just finished my previous book, I decided I felt more like reading a mystery than reading more science fiction.

Being a slow reader, and being of a natural bent that I don't put a book down unless I just can't stand it (because there's always that chance that it could get better when all is revealed in the end), reading books I'm not somewhat enthusiastic about beforehand is usually a recipe for unhappiness for days if not weeks.

Another form of this feeling is something I've largely worked through, by now. I'm a collector of things. I enjoy having complete sets of things, and knowing about a particular set of things thoroughly. This is surely due in part to growing up collecting comic books. I've also applied it to series of books, CDs by a given artist (I have almost every CD that Jethro Tull ever released, for instance), and TV series I videotape.

I kept buying the comic book series Legion of Super-Heroes and X-Men long after they ceased to be of much value. But, eventually I realized in each case that the series had basically become unreadable, and I did finally stop buying them. And I even sold all the issues after I'd lost interest. (For the curious, I stopped buying X-Men with issue #230, circa 1987, and sold all my issues after #176. I kept up with Legion for quite a bit longer, through periods that were sometimes interesting but often banal, and through much bad art. I eventually sold most of my issues after vol 3, #25, which I guess was published in the late 80s. But I'm not inclined to go look right now.)

These days I mostly only buy comics that interest me, and I'm often inclined to stop buying a series, and then pick it up later when it seems more interesting, filling in missing issues as necessary. (I did this with Flash, for instance, bailing around #110, and coming back in with #149, filling in most issues from #130-148, while selling #80-110.) Other than Babylon 5, which is simply a favorite of mine, I'm not obsessive about most TV shows. (I've missed various episodes of Homicide, for instance.) And I guess once one gets into jazz music, that cures one of trying to be a completist about a particular artist.

But the worst feeling this tendency ever gives me is when I feel that I've failed, and at something that I feel I ought to have succeeded at, because it seems (rightly or wrongly) that anyone else would have succeeded.

It's driving me up the wall that I chose an apartment which was so obviously so far away from where all my friends were. I look back at it and I realize that I didn't really know where many of my friends-to-be lived, and that I didn't have a good sense of scale of the Bay Area to understand how far I was from the friends I did already have, last March. And it seemed to me that everyone drives long distances out here anyway, so there wouldn't be much issues with people driving down to see me, and me driving up to see people. All horribly wrongly estimated, of course, as I do the vast majority of the driving.

It bothers me that other people seem to easily meet other people, make friends, get dates, etc. etc. Many people feel comfortable chatting with strangers in social situations (parties, etc.). Some people go right up to people and chat with them even in unusual situations (random people you encounter on a hike, people at a coffee shop, etc.). All of this is entirely greek to me. It's so far beyond my own standard of relating to people that I continue to suspect that there's some secret to this that I haven't been let in on, even though I'm pretty sure that it's just me, just who I am.

So I become a perpetual worry-wart. There should be an easier way, I should be in a better place than I am, I shouldn't be so intimidated by other people, I ought to try harder.

I should worry less.

But I almost never do. Sometimes when I go on vacation, and really do get away from it all, then I put my worries behind me for a while. But they always catch up with me.

I really ought to do something about that.