Who knew?

It turns out that watching shows with lots of beautiful pan shots of deserts and mountains, explosions,  giant robots fighting each other, and pilots angsting over their lives is a good way to pass the time while you sort and organize your collection of 9+ years of OWCP injury files.  And playing shows with tons of potty humor and generally inappropriate content can help distract your mind from the rage as you figure out what to scan/bring when you visit the doctor one last time in an attempt to get a code added to your file.  Maybe I should have looked for something with more explosions because my jaw is killing me from when I must have been clenching my teeth while taking notes and marking things with sticky papers.

By this time next year, for better or for worse, pray that this fight is all over.  I don't want to deal with another year of this, even if it means the OWCP wins their game of trying to make injured workers give up on ever getting any real help and justice.  Just crush all my hope to atomic base components once and for all if it means I can be done with all this.  As I've mentioned before, hope springing eternal gets more head injuries from low ceilings than docile despair.

Miles once said, "I'm tired
of playing wall."  Me too, boy.
Me, too.

Practicing for Failure

Why is it that I don't get better at failing, even with all the practice I've had?  Should I even want to?  I'm pretty sure that being good at failure is not something I should be striving for, but it's the only thing I've had a lot of practice in lately, so I should be great at it.

My small group music fell through.  I could blame it on unprofessional singers, but it was more a matter of priorities, or maybe high expectations.  True, we're not professionals, but if you commit to doing something, especially something as complex as an a cappella musical piece, then I darn well expect you to follow through.  I don't care if you're not a professional, if you're a college student, or if you can't play piano.  I just care if you do what you say you'll do.  I expect that you will.  I am . . . disappointed.

It's partly my fault for choosing the group members I did, but I really think I chose people who had the ability to get things done.  I tried to strike that balance (I thought I was getting better at) between pressuring enough to make them work hard but not so much that they quit.  Should I have turned into Captain Blood?  I don't know if that would have helped.

There were things I could have done differently, such as dropping that easy song the second time it went so badly because some of them just didn't want to learn it, or dropping both in favor of the one tune we all knew from an earlier concert and could have done with the Christmas words . . .

I think the trick is that even if you fail a lot, you have to keep trying or you'll lose.  Something.  Your forward momentum?  The game?  I don't know.  I blame Miles for his bad influence by insisting on playing the game and winning with the hand dealt.  I should pause and consider what he lost, I suppose. 

Sounds like it's time for another read-through.  Maybe I'll stick with the later ones.  I always did like the summary for Memory in the chronology for the Vorkosigan books: "Miles hits thirty.  Thirty hits back."  In theory, Miles was far more breakable than me.

There will still be plenty of beauty in this Christmas concert without my special pieces, and I can go sing from the balcony tomorrow before rehearsal.