Failure

Failure: The state or fact of being lacking or insufficient; falling short.

I'm convinced that there is not a group of people in the world that enjoys failure as much as alcoholics. We think that we fail at everything, even when we are succeeding. We can turn a great accomplishment into a stinking cesspool of misery at the drop of a hat -- an iron hat with more iron taped to the bill. Normal achievements barely register on our Radar of Self-Worth, and we explode the inevitable shortcomings that pester everyone into gigantic, colossal problems.

We live in a world of Funhouse Mirrors -- everything takes on a spooky, surreal appearance. We exercise, take a shower, comb our hair, and get all dressed up in our best clothes, then check our appearance in a wavy, curvy, distorted surface. Our head is tiny but our lips are huge and our eyes bug out; we're bald, with ears that look like hot air balloons; our legs are short, our feet look like canoes, and we wobble and shimmer like Gumby. "Man, I look like crap," we think, as we blow by the regular human mirror.

Maybe today I can just try to do my best. Maybe today I can throw away those ridiculous, unattainable benchmarks that no one but me uses. We're never going to finish everything. We're lucky if we do a few things well, let alone succeed at every task we attempt.

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then throw in the towel --there's no sense in being an idiot about it.