A perfectionist

My roommate is like a totally different person from me - he loves tidiness, cares about literally everything (except for sleep schedule, his sleep schedule is as horrible as mine), plans for everything that can be planned, and wants them to go as plans.

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He's like the complete opposite of me, someone that does not really care about tidiness (I have a stunning record of not cleaning up my desk for 6 months straight because I don't have a roommate during that time), only cares about things that might pull me into trouble (to be exact, sometimes I don't care about them too unless it starts to burn my tail), always have an empty mind, does whatever I like without extensive planning, and hold the concept of "you only live once" in a different way. Yes, the most I have is actually a to-do list on my phone. Besides that, making a to-do list is one thing, sticking to it is another. You know what I mean.

If you aim for anything above average, that is going to give you some nice stress, especially if you are not me. He aims for something much higher than that - I can almost say that he is a perfectionist. I don't really know how we lived together, but he knows to not care about my stuff so I guess he ignored the pile of dust beside my bed or something like that...alright, back to topic, he really has some good amount of stress on him, and I can clearly tell that he is busy as hell most of the times. Main reason? He does not really want to push stuff to others. I can fully justify why - most of the times we know that our teammates suck and we can't take the risk ourselves. I had that experience before, and I am literally doing 4 times the job what the lecturer expected. What's worse? When you have to lead the team, and the team is full of not-so-good members. The stress is real then. Don't ask how I know these without looking at his messages or knowing who are his teammates, if you are in my position you can also understand it by hearing his rants on the phone. I know, it's bad to know what others are talking over the phone when you are not in the call, but it's hard to not know when you are about 1 meter away from him most of the times in the room.

So, recently, I think he really couldn't take it anymore, called his mum, and did a 3 hour rant marathon. I did not pay attention to it, but I can feel the stress and frustration within him. He knows what to do and is frequently unhappy with what others are doing (not to capabilities, not putting effort, etc, and talking about this I have not submitted the maintenance request form we discussed about during last fortnight...). 24 hour is too little. I feel that too. Not sure if he cried, but I will admit that I did cried a ton of times due to stress last year because I really don't have any other methods to vent them out. No one to speak to. Sometimes a teenager's thought is strange, talking issues to parents is not the best idea in the heart.

Whatever, he decided to give himself a good break. Went to the mall for one full day, had a 12 hour sleep, got a new haircut, and he is now watching YouTube vids after coming back from class at night instead of looking at a bunch of documents. I am actually quite happy to see that he is finally letting go some of his frustration, have some fun, and finally get back to track after he feels better. Sometimes humans really need to find ways to live as a human - we are not robots.

Sometimes, I wonder what I can do as a roommate to help him out. Obviously I can't actually help him with his coursework (I'm taking computer science while he is taking traditional Chinese medicine), but I do help him to proofread his stuff from time to time. Yea, from this point you can already tell how much he cares about his stuff. To be honest, I almost never asked others to proofread my things - most of the times it's Grammarly, if I really feel the need for it (uh, maybe I need to change that for the rest of my assignments, it's university). Probably I should start to more actively help in cleaning the toilet and stuff like that. You know, removing one task from him is one less burden. Probably. I mean, I really don't have a lot of things to do - I can still update this blog on a daily basis (and sometimes question if people really read what I write here), and probably spend a few hours on mobile games on a daily basis. Ah right, I should also submit that maintenance request form as soon as possible.

My mum is used to say that it is good to have two contradicting characters living together so that it balances out. Well, probably that make sense. Now I am indeed learning how to cope with a perfectionist, and trying to make myself care about more stuff. Since, well, what's better than paying a little more attention when you can? Unused resources in the brain are wasted.

Probably I will wrap it up here. No conclusions, you might be able to find it up there :)

See you next time.

--Lilacse