What exactly have I gotten myself into? People don't really think of me as hypercompetitive, since I don't tend to be cutthroat when playing games with my friends. I laugh at myself when I lose a week (or two or three in a row) in fantasy football. I clap when other women in my club win hands of bingo, even though I never win myself. I refused to play Monopoly or Risk, even with my kids, for most of the last twenty years, because I hate how they pit family members against each other, and can only be won when some of the players team up against a weaker player. But when it comes to creative pursuits, or feats of academic excellence, I can't stand to lose. I get vicious at pub trivia. I burn up inside with jealousy when anyone else is recognized for drawing, sewing, or designing talent, even though I am entirely confident in my own abilities and don't need emotional stroking to feel creative. I never turned down an interscholastic meet in high school, and I have to actively pull my fingers off the keys when I score better at Facebook quizzes than my friends. (I got a perfect score on a little geography quiz tonight that I thought was seriously too easy, but it just felt rude to say so on my dear friend's post, so I didn't.) I can delude myself into believing that I could perform better than nearly every singer when I am out on a karaoke night. So how do I react when my only competition is myself? It depends on the situation, but I have been known to get super obsessive about beating my own records. I challenged myself to write every day, even when I had nothing to say. So far, zooming up on 500 posts, I have yet to miss. I have made myself open up the computer at the end of every day, and I just start typing. Sometimes I have spent the entire day planning out what I want to say, and sometimes the stream of consciousness takes me places I never knew existed. Today I really didn't feel like writing. I had to spend a lot of time today putting on a happy face that just doesn't fit. I've had to say things are going well when clerks and cashiers and people I don't know from Adam ask me how I am. I've been sore and cranky and dyspeptic. I was a little spacey while driving, and I'm a little surprised I didn't have a wreck. But because I can't break a perfect streak, I had to figure out how to shrug off the bad mood, and continue living my life in full view of everyone. Once I admitted to myself and to my family that I was really just an attention whore (and started swearing that all I wanted as gifts for most holidays was time and attention), and I opened up my life to the public record, I realized I had fallen into a trap. I didn't allow myself room to be anti-social or private. I don't know how to take it back anymore. I'm afraid if I stop for just one night, I'll never write every day again. I'm stuck in a snare of my own making. Ah, well. I will just make the best of it, because I know that I'm my own competition, and that chick never lets up. I have to win.
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