After my birthday, I felt a compulsion to photograph and log the presents I received (along with the food etc.), but instead I decided to fight that urge because I realised it was a response to my inability to feel happy on my birthday despite the efforts of others (I was very sleep-deprived), and the guilt associated with that. Instead I wrote the following in my sketchbook:
"perfectionism and cataloguing as a way of coping with lack of fulfillment
lack of fulfillment leading to feeling of lack of 'meaning' for events
perfectionism becomes the new 'meaning'
cataloguing is a way to feel as though the events have consequence
cataloguing and recording birthday presents: 'these people are putting effort into making you happy - why are you not happy - record everything that these people are doing for you'*
very little sense of fulfillment -> replace general fulfillment with something else which becomes your new goal -> actions are limited to those which work towards your goal"
On researching Sophie Calle for my dissertation, I found something relevant:
"Calle has created elaborate display cases of birthday presents given to her throughout her life."
"Calle further decided she would not use the gifts her family and friends brought for her, but would display them in a glass-fronted vitrine for a year, as a tangible token of their affection. After each birthday, the previous year's gifts would be stored away and the new ones displayed. In The Birthday Ceremony Calle exhibits all the gifts accumulated between 1980 and 1993, her 40th birthday, when she terminated the ritual."
Luckily, the more I read, the more relevant to my dissertation this seems; I suspect that since my mind is easily blown by tiny coincidences, I would have probably tried to force this shit into my dissertation either way.
*Usually I try to stick to a more detached narration of my thought processes, but in this case I felt it would be most efficient to just spell out exactly what my brain seemed to be whining.
