Completism, being a Completist: C/D?

I was going to start a more general ILX thread on this, but this will do. I have this problem to a degree. I don't usually set about to collect everything of something, but what does happen often is that I get partway and the completist impulse takes over. Some examples.

I bought a few baseball media guides at a card show five years ago; the seller told me he had more, and two trips to his house and six or seven hundred dollars later, I'd bought every guide he had, encompassing almost every team from 1981 to the mid-2000s. It's hard to convey how truly useless these guides are in the era of online sites like Baseball Reference.

A book series called Images of America. I found a few in a sale bin 20 years ago when Chapters here merged with Indigo. Then I found a few more, then a few more, and now I have 36 of them. I've never opened even one, and I'm not a traveler.

https://phildellio.tripod.com/rocky.jpg

I could trot out lots of other examples. My newest thing is pocket Blue Jay schedules. Starting around 2010, I'd grab a few from various Rogers stores, and I bought a handful of earlier ones here and there. Seeing how many I had, I made a list of which ones I still needed and took a look on eBay. I've bought another 10 or so, and I'm down to eight for a complete 1977-2020 set. I haven't paid more than $2 or $3 for anything yet; when I get down to the last couple, I'll have to save me from myself.

Those Images of America books are freaking ubiquitous. I find they make good gifts for self-proclaimed "local history buffs."

Personally, I've never felt the impulse to collect *all* of *anything*, not even Pokemon. Dunno if this makes me a slacker or a well-adjusted human being.

A well-adjusted human being.

I strive to be a completist but I usually fail at it.

That means you're maladjusted and incompetent.

(I'm totally kidding--it was just teed up, and I couldn't resist. C'mon, we're Canadians.)

Hah, I was going to make a similarly (self-)deprecating joke, but you beat me to the punch.

I used to be a completist but learned it's better to be a curator.

(I have lots of baseball books that need to go, too)

I definitely suffer from this sickness. Thankfully, I'm neither fervent nor wealthy enough to elevate it to the level of a crippling illness. It helps that my tendency is limited solely to books, comics, and physical copies of filmed media, but it turns out you can really do some damage even within those seemingly narrow parameters.

I have completist notions but run up against my own laziness. At one point I had it in mind to collect CBRs of all Marvels from FF#1 until Jim Shooter's elevation to EiC, early 1978, but then I realized how much work it would be.

I was an aspirational Boards of Canada completist until this happened:

www.discogs.com/Boards-Of-Canada-XXXXXX-/release/4516654

Never got the Old Tunes tapes either, of course, but I still actually want those

Another example for me: these puzzles.

http://www.rediscoverjigsawpuzzles.com/

I bought the Dylan, Rolling Stones, Grateful Dead, and Jackson Browne on sale about a decade ago, $10 each. I stupidly passed on the Johnny Cash, two or three of which would pop up in that particular store for the next year or two. Then it was gone, and I never saw it again. I started checking online a few years ago, but with shipping and exchange, it'd now cost upwards of $30 at least. I've also discovered the Hendrix, Bowie, and Nirvana puzzles make up the complete set. I keep checking periodically, and will probably still be checking the day I die.

I'm sure I don't even need to say this: I don't do jigsaw puzzles. They sit on a shelf downstairs unopened.

I have completist notions but run up against my own laziness. At one point I had it in mind to collect CBRs of all Marvels from FF#1 until Jim Shooter's elevation to EiC, early 1978, but then I realized how much work it would be.

The least I can say is that I do regularly engage with the spoils of my completionist impulses (like, I do keep watching the pre-Code movies I keep amassing). It's just that at a point I know I will have collected more stuff than I can read or watch within the number of years I have remaining. And I suppose I'll have to finally draw a line when/if I fill up the storage unit i rent to deal with the runoff.

clemenza, your puzzle example makes me think of

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_OH78jHz6w

That's good! My puzzle quest makes me think of Damone ridiculing Ratner in Fast Times at Ridgemont High: "You bought forty dollars worth of fucking film, and you don't even own a camera."

Oh hey - Images of America - that's something worth being completist about!

I think I've only been this way about certain comics.