Good Lord, there's nothing wrong with that that; being a "lifelong learner" is a goal every person should aspire to. Nurture that drive any way you can.
Well... ok... maybe just take it easy for a little while. No sense trying to do it all at once!
I just meant "maladaptive" in the very general sense of the word (as in a behavior that is not functional in a given situation). Making beds in a burning building or bringing a knife to a gun fight would also be examples of maladaptive behaviors.
I honestly wasn’t trying to start a big discussion about why people visit this site, or why people have the interests they do, or whatever (for my own sake if anything, believe me
I'm NOT saying "mind your own business"; *** knows people can think too much sometimes and wait around deciding what to do while the world passes them by. With the amount of need there is, I should probably be telling everyone to put a smile on your face and a song in your heart and go to work for a noble cause. What I am saying (and not to you JMH) is to think a little bit before you open your mouth and accuse everyone of something. [But don’t come down too hard on the accuser though, you can't always be sure of his/her motivations either.
The biggest thing you need to watch out for if Consumer Reports and the like is your Bible is that you don’t end up falling prey to an arbitrary ranking system. Do what works and buy what works for what YOU need, not what someone else is telling you is the “best” or the “worst”. Develop some of your own criterion before you even go out to look at the product. If CA scores your favorite cigar low on the list, does that mean that you now are supposed to enjoy it any less? Does an “82” mean that you were mistaken about how great you though it was? Oops! I guess your taste buds aren’t as “sophisticated’ as the author, so you should make a better choice (coincidentally, you should probably be choosing the cigar company that the author and editor hold the most shares in). Again, something that you would figure most adults should/would have pieced together, but take a look around…
From what I’ve read of your posts (now I am talking to you again JMH), I think you’re just trying to glean the details of the products you are looking at so you can decide for yourself what the most appropriate option for your situation is, not because you are inherently indecisive or accept a talking head’s subjective viewpoint on what you need. If your behavior gets reinforced by responses from the BITOG crowd, then all the more reason for you to continue. In fact, it looks like you’ve got a pretty sweet deal going: you found something you enjoy doing, you make wiser purchases because of your interest, and you help others at the same time. I say congratulations. You're not crazy.
Oh, and as Columbo would say… one more thing: it’s easy to get materialistic when you enjoy analyzing doo-dads so much, because the things you are evaluating are tactile and accessible [side note: who else watches that show with Marc Summers (or a show like it) and then ends up buying one of the products just because you know more about it?], plus you can show off your awesomely thoughtful purchase to all your buddies later on. However, (and I’m just speaking from personal experience here) you can trick yourself into believing that having possession of an object is more important than it really is. If you set off with the assumption that you “must” have something or “if I just had this one thing…”, then you will probably end up acquiring it one way or another (not just talking stuff at the store anymore). More often than not, if you really review the object of your desire with an open mind, you will find that you either don’t need it at all, or that you already have something that will work just as well, or what you really need is a night out on the town, or a camping trip with your friends, or a slap in the face, or a good night’s sleep. Something like that (this is all still from my personal experience, may you hopefully learn from my mistakes). If it’s something grandiose and unobtainable, people can start to get a little Gollum-like about their desires. It’s kind of pitiful to see someone so wrapped up in something so insignificant. Ugh. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket and get like that. Find a diverse assortment of ways to fulfill that analytical perfectionist drive inside you. From the number of political threads Tony has to swat down on a regular basis, I’d say more than a few people here seem to enjoy chewing up the men in black who pop up in the news as a way to blow off some steam. Or by cooking. Or shooting. Or… hey… is there a pattern here?
LOL at another one of my manifesto-length posts. I know I don’t get the chance to write much anymore like I used to, maybe that’s why. Who knows…
