Jaded, sober, keeling over

I might have finally become jaded with my hobby...at least by a little.

Model making is expensive, that I already know. The high expense of priming, painting, sanding and bonding all of these plastic parts is obvious; however I haven’t even painted most of the kits I have. Rather, I’m put off by the expense of the kits themselves not being commensurate to the satisfaction I’d expected.

Many of my bigger 1/100 Gunpla models are startlingly imperfect considering how much I shell out for them. For all the engineering greatness of the MG Zeta Gundam ver.2.0 kit, for instance, it hasn’t stopped me from breaking its left middle finger made of ABS plastic. The Gundam Astray Red Frame isn’t as posable as its joints and construction promise it would be. The MG Strike Rouge has disappointingly weak legs and feet, while the MG Zeta Plus A1’s crotch-leg plates have inexorably come loose.

While this probably won’t turn me off from the hobby altogether, I guess this is a welcome wake-up call from the power of Bandai’s marketing machine. Couldn’t have come at a better time, really.

Maybe I should seriously consider selling some of them off.
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Edith told me that I was too much of a perfectionist, and indirectly I could sense she thought I was being too hard on myself.

I gave it some thought. Apparently, all my life I have had trouble grasping this concept of “being human”—people cannot be expected to totally avoid making mistakes, nor can they be expected to fulfill their roles to the letter all the time. If foul-ups happen, we should just laugh them off.

This is one of those cases where I am pretty sure my biggest enemy is myself. I don’t know what happened to my psyche growing up, but I developed the mindset that people should be at their best 100% of the time; conversely I should be too. As a result I had put tremendous pressure on myself and on others, and I didn’t even know it. I treat mistakes harshly, and if they’re mine I take them to heart; I am uncomfortable letting my bad experiences slide.

Looking at myself now, I wonder how I became such a self-loathing neurotic. I wonder how I could bring myself to be otherwise. It’s sickening how I’m this tightly coiled spring all the time, especially in times when I simply don’t need to be high-strung.

One of my favorite movies, “EDtv,” has this ending song lyric:
If you wanna be somebody else, change your mind.

It’s a lot easier said than done. Knowing what my problem is is only half the battle.
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One of those things that keeps me high-strung: clocks and watches.

Growing up as a kid I couldn’t imagine life without wearing a watch. To be honest, though, I feel nowadays they’re nothing more but invisible fetters. And the stupid thing is, I can’t help but look at them. I can’t break myself out of the shackles of time.