I mean well.  I do.  I follow rules and instructions and only occasionally take short-cuts.  I'm considerate and kind, a very tolerant, patient, understanding and forgiving individual, sympathetic and empathetic at my core.

Still, I cannot deny my strength, boundaries and resilience, all of which is at my core as well.  And I expect no one to deny these things, either.  I have a balanced core.  Others have a right to one, too. 

For all the ways in which I exhibit a truly well-meaning attitude in life, I can be a hothead at times.  It's not like I become hotheaded and irate at an ice-cream parlor's staff when it runs out of my favorite flavor or when a friend is late for a social gathering.  I don't implode, explode, make a head roll when someone makes an honest mistake.   My episodes of hotheadedness have merit, you know.  I stand up for myself.  I stand up for the little guy or underdog.  And I consider the ability to discriminate between what deserves my attention or concern and what doesn't a gift.

                                            
                                  


Anyway, just because I mean well all the time, it doesn't mean that what comes from me is always well.  Or, for that matter, perfect.  I make mistakes like everyone else.  Genuine mistakes, of course.  My goal is not to hurt as many feelings as I possibly can throughout my lifetime.  I'm not deliberately a goof.  And I don't use the word "oopsie!", repetitively or loosely (if at all). 

Oopsie loses its luster when said after a fifth similar offense, after all.  Sometimes a third clone of a mistake is all it takes for many of us to get the boot, in fact.

So, here I am, and I've made a poo.  A figurative one, folks, not a real one.  The real one I made this morning, and it's probably in the Hudson river, right now.


                                       


No.  This particular shit I've made is kind of a big, flattened, smushed and smeared deal.  The kind that not even Nature's Miracle will clean up. 

Yup, someone's carpet is ruined for good here.  And, unfortunately, I'm not a magician and cannot turn back the hands of time to rectify this error which, in the grand scheme of things, is really not the biggest loss to ever befall humanity.  Or even a single human for that matter.  It's bad.  I feel bad.  But I haven't kicked-off a chain reaction that will end in the Earth caving into itself and everyone dying.  This is the first time this incidence has occurred, not the second, third or fifth time.  And it happened in an area of my existence in which I'm still learning and nowhere near a master.


                                    


I am unsure about how to make this all better.  Which is odd, considering I make people feel better, and things all better, pretty damn often.  But I am sure of this: I'm pretty exhausted of apologizing and digging around in an attempt to figure out where it was that I'd gone wrong.  I'm pretty exhausted about beating myself up about honest mistakes.  I'm pretty exhausted of thinking about the possibility that every other decent to excellent performance of mine has been, is, and might very well be overlooked someday because of an honest mistake. 

Most importantly, I'm pretty exhausted of living in a world in which we no longer wish to distinguish an honest mistake from a deliberate one.  Clean intent from muddy intent.  Kindred spirits from douchey ones.  I think many of us are too lazy and impatient to do realize the differences, even when they're staring right at us. 

People who deliberately screw up, time and time again, get away with their behavior while people who sincerely don't mean to screw up get the short end of a stick.

And we wonder why our world is so fucked up?

On the bright side, I'm beginning to grasp the reality that I deserve better than this kind of worry and stress.  I deserve understanding, effort, sympathy, empathy, forgiveness, patience and more from others.  As much as I give is fantastic, really ideal.  But I can settle for less than that.  I'm just not going to accept so little that I am left doubting or distrusting myself and my abilities. 

Not anymore.


                                        


Besides, the truth is that no matter how some of us wish to cut it, no relationship or environment-- whether professional, amicable, romantic, familial, etc-- can survive an imbalanced exchange of these characteristics.  Not a single one.