With Fluffy having an eye injury and a new medicine regimen suddenly in place, I found myself getting out of bed at 3:45 this morning, to begin the process.
So, by 5 am, all kitty chores were long since done and I grabbed the camera and this time took the drive down to south Tampa, to Ballast Point so that I could catch twilight in that neck of the woods.
In truth I had no idea what the weather was going to be because partly cloudy can mean literally anything in the weather app.
It was really dark when I first arrived, unaided by the fact that nearly all the lights on the pier were turned off. I hadn’t witnessed this before so I don’t know if was authorities way of discouraging visitors due to the whole COVID thing. Who knows?
It was my first return to Ballast Point since breaking my wrist on St. Stephen’s Day and on my return to the scene of the crime, I wondered if my absence was deliberate or just because I was busy elsewhere.
In truth, there was no fear associated with the return. I wasn’t planning on embarking on any foolishness like the last time. But it still felt odd. Sort of like a homecoming but in an odd way.
As I was driving down there, that is where I came up with the thought for this morning’s blog … the whole notion of getting back on the saddle after a misadventure.
Anyway, I have attached a number of the images from this morning at the end of the blog. They show the progression from very dark to a very warm orange sunrise. I hope you like!
And getting back on the saddle was ultimately a good feeling because the twilight delivered colors that I was hoping for. Perhaps it would have been different if it became awash in thick grey clouds.
The importance of making another attempt after a failure at something (which is what the “back in the saddle” idiom is about) is well documented and is generally taken as a good rule of thumb for how we should all get through life’s ups and downs.
And when faced with a conscious “do I” or “don’t I” decision, most of us make the right decision and we try again. But sometimes, there is no decision point. No active crossroads where we reassert our intention of trying again.
We allow the attempt to slip away and it doesn’t come across our radar again mostly because we don’t think about it.
In many ways, this is an avoidance mechanism and it is important that we don’t let our subconsciousness make decisions for us.
Decision making should always be a conscious effort and we need to stop and recognize any instances where it isn’t.
For example, my failure to catch heavy wave activity in the dark (which was the cause for my misadventure) slipped entirely off my radar and I have made no subsequent attempts.
But, even though my own stupidity caused a failure, the concept itself was a valid project and one that I definitely need to try again. And this morning, I chastised myself for letting it drift and resolved to make the effort soon.
Many a good idea can die on the rocks of failure if we give up and our lives are all the worse for it. Life is too short to allow ideas to languish in no-mans-land and we owe it to ourselves to give best efforts for each idea that we have.
Yes, there is no guarantee of success, but that shouldn’t stop us trying.
Soft failures are generally not real deterrents to a retry, but hard failures (like a broken wrist) are indeed reasons that people avoid another attempt.
Once burned, the pain of failure can be strong and long lasting. It could be a failed relationship, a disastrous project, or even a high-exposure failure that allowed the world to see our shortcomings. But none of these are reasons to abandon.
We just learn from the failure, regroup our efforts, and made another run at it. That is how we succeed and success after initial failure is all the more sweet.
Something hard-earned is much-cherished and victories that are much-cherished, form the backbone of personal success. So, dust off that saddle.
… just a thought!
