Perfectionism is fine if you can concretely define measurable goals before you start working, and trust yourself to have a process of refinement that doesn't fe

Perfectionism is fine if you can concretely define measurable goals before you start working, and trust yourself to have a process of refinement that doesn't feel like a circular loop to you. This can be very validating for some people in a sense that it's autonomous - independent from validation via the economy and independent from validation via culture, both being dynamical systems and consequently difficult to predict shifts in preference. Establishing dependency primarily on anything besides your own standard is a shortcut to misery when someone just doesn't care enough about every little detail you lovingly put into something. You may annoy the fuck out of everyone around you if you are actually successful, and it's important to be in a social environment where people are tolerant of perfectionism and thrive from it. It's just called being devoted. It doesn't have to be trivialized to a pejorative and mapped to a set of things approximately related to whatever goal you define. People can pick up on all of these things and get it wrong because unless you explain to them the point of all your work they won't necessarily understand it. It's then easy to internalize their issues as your own, which can implicitly shift your own standards, preferences. 'Better' in comparison to others is a state of mind that is ultimately destructive. If you like details and like feeling a sense of progress you define, better is perfectly fine to want to be. Muted, dull sameness has it's own tormented unchanging cyclical state that can be just as challenging to direct oneself out of once you convince yourself into it.