am i alone, and simply one of few lousy, undisciplined coders, or is perlmonks (as much as i love it!) a bit too perfectionistic at times??

It's not a black and white issue, but it sounds like you are further to the anarchic side of the continuum when it comes to using strict.

Consider this: without using strict, your development takes an hour; with strict is takes three hours. After that, support takes a day a week, compared to an hour a week. So it's yet another case of "You can pay me now or you can pay me later".

You decide.