So I just posted earlier this week that the one person I’ve never lost faith in is myself. Well…
… I still haven’t.
Look, when I was a teenager I used to box. Every once in a while I’d walk into the gym and my coach would overhear me complain about a bad decision I saw during that weekend’s fight. His answer was always the same: “Never let it go to a decision. If you really wanted to win, you’d knock that other fucker out.”
This applies to life as well. Presently, it applies to academics. I fell short at the finish line. I suppose I shouldn’t have declared victory early. I accomplished an incredible amount this semester. I’m proud of myself. I did everything I set out to do. I didn’t deserve how this ended. But, I let it go to a decision. I put it in the hands of the judges and in this life, unless you knock that other fucker out you have nowhere to point that finger but at yourself. I did better than I got credit for, but no one was out to get me. It’s just that sometimes you roll snake eyes. <–( Snake Eyes can beat you up. That’s the joke. Work with me people.)
I’m not going to sit here and tell you I did my best for two reasons: 1) Losers always whine about their best. Winners? Well…
2) The second reason is that this wasn’t my best. I tried hard. Really god damned hard. I put my heart and soul into this. I put my daughter to bed at 9:30 and stayed up doing homework until after 0300. But it wasn’t my best. There’s this thing called 0400. I could have stayed up until then. I spent a few weekends chasing tail rather than than reading about renvoi, depecarge, and the 2nd restatement of conflict of laws.
There was this fella a few years back you might have heard of. He liked to refer to himself as The Greatest. The first time he lost was when he met a Taggart Continental with a left hook named Joe Frazier. Like this last semester, it was a beautiful battle, but Ali lost when he let it go to the judges. (even though Smokin’ Joe was the better man that day and honestly did earn the decision)
Where to from here? Well, I’ve never quit anything before so I’m going to unfuck this JD malfunction most rickey tick.. I’m sure I’ll lose my job now, so that is unfortunate. So I’ll take the weekend off, defer what I can and salvage the money I’ve spent to prep myself for the Bar. But I’ll probably sit down with about $20 worth of Red Bull and dominos, grab a pad of paper and a nice green gel pen and reroute a new path to fortune and glory.
