On Achievement

[constance]

It doesn't matter how good you think you are, really. It doesn't matter if you are proven to be the best in the world at something. It doesn't matter if you know yourself to be the best. No matter how good you are, by how far you surpass the rest of the world at a particular thing, you have to get better. It's not even enough to stay at the top of your game. You have to improve and keep improving or the world will overtake you.

Normally I'm not much for competition, mostly because I am extremely friction-phobic and also so convinced that the rest of the world is better and smarter than me in every way that I don't even bother to start because I will just lose and what is the point in making myself look worse than I already am? Oops okay random moment of self-loathing over. I mean, honestly. This is true for every aspect of me but one, and I am willing to stand up for this one because in a competition I will always win, always beat out the callow upstarts, always be willing to go one better to stay on top.

I speak, of course, of my spectacular clumsiness. I am always running into things, always covered with inexplicable bruises, always falling or knocking huge stacks of things over or breaking things. But this is not enough. I mean, anyone can fall, yes? And so I like to change things up a little. I can fall while standing still and upright. I can bruise myself with a paperback book. I can put my foot through a television set without even really trying. I can walk straight into a doorway in a house I have lived in for years while I am looking at it and thinking Okay there is the door frame I have to be careful not to OOOOWWWWWWWW.

And yet even this is not enough. There are people on my friendslist who seek to supplant me! Yea, they are the veriest amateurs in comparison to my consummate professionalism, but it isn't enough just to say this. Every now and then I must demonstrate, even beyond the above refinements, the extent of my powers.

And so I say unto you that last night I broke my little toe while I lay sleeping. coco_palmolive will tell you that it is a spider bite, and that my foot will probably have to amputated within the next week or so as my flesh is slowly eaten away. DO NOT LISTEN TO HER LIES. She is sadly envious of my abilities, and you must pity her for that.

Or at least, it does not feel like a bite, it feels like a break, but even if I don't know for sure whether it is broken or not (and I don't), only consider this: last night when I went to bed I was perfectly fine. This morning I woke up to shooting pains and a steadily blackening toe, and it's only gotten uglier and more painful over the course of the day. Anyway, the point is that even if I didn't actually break it, whatever I did to it, and I did inarguably do something to it, I did while unconcscious.

Yeah, man. Still the greatest.

Comments

[laurelwood.livejournal.com]

It's reassuring, isn't it, to have that one thing you can always be greatest at?

You've got me totally beat, and I'm the girl whose parents, while shopping, left her outside china/knickknack shops with the explanation, "Well, honey, it's not like we have a choice. You know how you are."

The only way I've ever broken toes is bashing them on doorframes while fleeing from the spouse when I have candy I don't want to be forced to share. HOW did you manage to break yours while sleeping? Were you having a ballerina dream and accidentally went en pointe while sleepwalking to the bathroom?

[tofty.livejournal.com]

I have absolutely no idea how it happened! It just hurt when I woke up, and it's gone downhill from there.

I did have a dream, but I don't remember much about it, except that it was a mildish nightmare of the bureaucratic sort. Possibly I kicked a file cabinet? Ran to keep from drowning in paperwork and smacked into something?

[bowdlerized.livejournal.com]

Okay, uhm, you know I am excessively paranoid about health things, but I am pretty sure that if Coco the jealous, lying usurper is right and it is a spider bite, then it is bad news if it's still growing worse at this point. You should draw a line in pen around the border of the discolored area, and if it grows past the pen border, then I think you are supposed to go to the emergency room because it means the venom is spreading.

I am probably overreacting, but...constant vigilance, and all that. :/ And congratulations on the successful defense of your title.

[tofty.livejournal.com]

I've already promised that if it looks any worse tomorrow when I wake up I will call the doctor, or go to a clinic if I can! I really do take Coco's long-distance diagnoses seriously, you see. But the bruising is very localized, and it hasn't spread--there are no nasty red streaks or anything, and you know what? I just soaked it in warm water for a while--well let's just call it what it was, which is a bath--and it is actually looking a bit better. I will sleep the sleep of the optimistic tonight, and you should too!

[font.livejournal.com]

I would just like to point out that I uphold the validity your claim! You have rare talent in this field with which I know I cannot compete, even if I have not inconsiderable skill in it myself.

Seriously, though, I would get someone to take a look at it. It sounds nasty.

[tofty.livejournal.com]

I have to say that of all the people on my friendslist who are clumsy, and I think that must be practically everyone, because we are a clumsy lot, you are the only one who I feel can match me fall for fall. As one professional to another: I respect your skills, man, I do.

And I have a toe update which very excitingly pits me against the American Health Care System (in which the AHCS emerges the clear winner), but rather than post a 15-paragraph rant to your inbox, I will make it a post.