low down

We've all been low. No person alive hasn't gone through the regular troughs of existence that come with day to day breathing and existing and such. Some lows are lower than others, and some are just a part of the ebb and flow of the tides of life.

The amazing thing about hitting an all-time low however - in any category,- is that when you think you have come a decent climb up, you realize both how far you have yet to go to get to even, and then right after that - and perhaps more startlingly, just how far down you'd gone.


This is not necessarily a dumpy, woe-is-me sort of pontification here. It is however, a focused peek into the well.

First, and along these lines, let me say I would strongly caution anyone considering that wonderful and ethereal 'follow your dreams' category, educationally speaking. For fucks sakes, pick a collegiate major that can easily sustain you if you need it to, lest you find yourself switching gears and trying to learn a new career in the middle of a decade where you are supposed to (and your peers all do) have your shit together and the macro subject in which you will build your livelihood, sorted out and on track. Your passions will never go away - and for that matter, can continue to be cultivated while in school, and if you keep it all in the right order, you can do it all, have it all with much less pain.

Because then it's not backwards. then it's just about adapting to the set of circumstances before you and not just about weight and physical prowess and the elimination of debts. Then it's about a feeling of a job well-done. Of accomplishment and understanding and intellectual confidence. About being able to explain yourself in the middle of a subject on which you were previously and blissfully unawares and not about scrambling to keep ever so slighlty ahead of that 8balllll.

Trust me when I say it will make the matter of having thrown yourself headlong into an exceptionally challenging situation much smoother, and you'll have a better road of assuance in knowing that you have risen to the challenge and not had the challenge rise over and swallow you.


Simply put, it will be easier to achieve satisfaction.


In the mind of a relentless perfectionist, I don't know that this is ever achieved, however. I mean, it's so easy to sit and tally failures, isn't it? A million greats toppled by that one awesome falter. And when you sit with an awesome failure and own it, the way a real person should, it pretty much just sucks.

So there you are, with your big balls and big risk and your big brain and your big ideas and your one, big, throbbing, taunting failure. If only to put distance between the lows that come with the trials, and the exponential compounding of the fact that at one point in time, you fucked up, somewhere, somehow, to someone, on something. There's no do-over, no take-back.

Oh the scissors to the sweater, that one. All it takes is one thread.

Such gloom and doom, I know. But then comes the bottom - and the bottom is at a lot of different levels when you really map the undulation over time. But wherever the low is, then starts the climb and it all looks familiar on the way up. The velocity of climbing increases with confidence and resolve and soon, the fact that literally every single thing in your life is different doesn't matter anymore - you're climbing. Right?