Failure

I guess our failures define us more than our successes.  Winning the Civil War didn't shape the North the way defeat has shaped the South.  We always remember "the one that got away."

I haven't failed often, but that's partly because there've been many times when I didn't even try.  I look back to writing my Ph.D. thesis over fifteen years ago.  Though I got my degree in the end, I still felt that somehow it hadn't been as good as I hoped it would be.  It's like the scene in Easy Rider where Dennis Hopper says "We did it!" but Peter Fonda says "We blew it." Maybe that's a common feeling among Ph.Ds.  I might have become a teacher, but I truly felt finished with academia.

Since finishing my Ph.D., I'll admit I haven't done much with my life.  In that Langston Hughes poem "Mother to Son" (where she says "Life for me ain't been no crystal stair,") there's a line that goes: "Don't sit down on the steps because you think it's kinda hard." I suppose I've been sitting on the steps.  I'm unemployed, but I haven't made a serious effort to get a job.  And I haven't really tried to get a girlfriend either.  But I have stayed active.  My mother once said that I'm too busy to work!