Hey Again, Steemitizens,
This one is to my friends and family. The rest of you can look on at this train wreck but you might want to avert your eyes as well... This one is transparent on the block chain because I want to be transparent about this for sure, in fact, that's kind of the point of the whole upcoming pile of word vomit but it addresses things that are somewhat personal, so well, there's that, too.
Things are looking good so far, right guys? Um, right guys? Guys?...
Folks, I have been riding a wave of statistical and social success since I came to steemit and more specifically since I joined PAL Network and Minnow Support Project's discord family and started trying to get in and fit in over there on the discord. At times my growth on steemit and in PAL/MSP has been fast, furious, exciting, heady, and at times baffling, surprising and overwhelming.
I've been on steemit for only 87 days today. In less than 3 months on the platform, I've climbed various ranking categories on steemwhales.com and I'm in nearly every top 5000 user category out of more than 300,000 accounts on steemit, with all this happening so fast in my relatively short time on the steem/steemit platform.
I'm amazed and grateful at the support of friends and my new "family" here which is purely why my growth and achievements have even been possible. I wrote a "love letter" to all of you a few days ago to try and let you know how that feels already, but this post is not about that at all.
This post is about my failures and mistakes and maybe I will be able to address them in some fashion to attempt an apology and to ask for forgiveness.
So yeah, this post is going to be confession and apology for some mistakes, but first, some wins to set the stage:
Here are some of the stat's I've managed to achieve so far - top 5000 or less in every category:
Total Steem Blockchain Accounts as of 9:15 AM EST on September 8th, 2017:
358,896
This is me:
I am a witness currently ranked at #100
Rankings by post_count: #334
Rankings by followers: #1137
Rankings by follows: #1398
Rankings by reputation: #3347
Rankings by posting_rewards: #3059
Rankings by curation_rewards: #3427
Rankings by sbd_balance: #1923
Rankings by steem_power: #4009
Rankings by estimated_value: #4479
At a glance, things don't look to shabby for my first 87 days on steemit, considering all those rankings for every category when compared to a total of nearly 370,000 accounts!
Mistakes Will Be Made
Sometimes though, not all is as it seems, nor do numbers always tell the entire story. I also have some serious failures and mistakes that I've made, and those "scores" are far more important to me than the ones that look so good outlined above.
These "scores" need to be settled. Not that I can ever make any of them perfectly whole again, but I can try to express that I'm aware of them and only make the promise to try and learn and grow from them and do better by all of you in the future coming days, weeks, months and years that I hope we will all be spending together here on the block chain.
I have made an ass of myself in public chat channels. Not just once, but a million times. I have insulted people, I have offended people, and I have belittled people. I am immediately embarrassed in every case when this happens. Flat out disgusted with myself for some of my behaviors and I've spoken on this many times in prior posts and on my MSP Waves radio shows, but I don't think I've ever truly embraced just what a shithead I can really be sometimes, and this morning, as I sip my coffee and reflect, it is all sort of overwhelming me like a storm surge during a hurricane. I'm letting that sink in and that is what prompted this post.
I have in the past 24 hours, failed the two friends I consider my closest, most loved friends in PAL/MSP discord and really, in the entire world at this point in my life.
One of my friends is dealing with the suicide of her close friend. This friend has stood by ME in MY darkest rock bottom hours when I thought my whole world was disappearing before my very eyes. When I thought I was losing that which is most dear to me, this friend held my hand virtually through the wires and stayed awake with me all night, offering moral support, advice and love, which I am eternally grateful for. And I let her down. When her friend passed away, she came to me and I promised to be here and stand beside her as she had for me, just one day prior.
Only I didn't. I fell asleep. I don't drink much, but the period of 24 hours from my breakdown leading into hers caused me to put down a few shots of whiskey I wouldn't normally be touching to such excess and I didn't make the grade. I fell asleep on the job of standing by my friend and I failed to be a good friend as a result. This. This invalidates any kind of "achievement" I may be making elsewhere all by itself. It's a bitter pill to swallow when you let down a friend in such dire circumstances. I feel terrible about it, and I am not sure how to even begin to apologize. But I guess it starts with I'm sorry, my friend. I love you, but I failed you. I hope you can forgive me.
Oh that's bad. But that's not all.
Simultaneously to fucking up like I did for my friend as described above, I was also damaging another important friendship as hard as I possibly could, with as much speed and precision as a guided nuclear missile.
There is someone in my life who I am head over heels in love with. I admire this person, I respect this person. I learn from this person every. single. day. and I want so badly to be loved back by them. To earn their respect. To be the kind of man this person could learn to love themselves. Yes, it's a woman. Yes, she is everything I ever dreamed of. Yes, it's probably impossible for 1000 reasons for us to ever become a thing. It's one of those things. A best friend you wish was more, but you take what you can get and try to cope with the rest. What could possibly go wrong?
Well, pretty much everything that I can fuck up about this, I have fucked up about this.
Man when the stakes are that high, it's amazing how much easier it is to really screw them up. Even as recently as last as just 10 hours ago I caused a huge problem for this person. I caused it by trying too hard. My intentions were good, but the road to hell is paved with those, right? I didn't intend to cause a problem, I was trying to make light of something I had already screwed up and I just keep compounding the problem. It lead to a bit of a catastrophe and once again, I am feeling pretty terrible about this too. And it's not the first time with this person. It seems to be every time I try to do something good or sweet or nice, I fuck it up completely.
The list of mistakes I've made here would take a long time to cover and spelling them out would identify too much about the situation, so in the interest of privacy, I'm not going to do that. I will freely admit the lengthy list of things I have done to create discomfort, unhappiness, disappointment, hurt feelings, heartache and lost time and technical problems for this person, but to do so would be unfairly exposing them without permission.
When you reach the point of hurting your friends and loved ones so badly that you feel like you should never show your face to them again, you've reached a pretty low point indeed. And this is how I feel today. I feel like I should go crawl under a rock. And even as I say that, I can hear these very same two friends I've most recently failed, comforting me and telling me it will be okay. This is why I love them both so much and why it hurts so badly that I have failed them.
My mistake making doesn't just stop on the block chain either.
I have so much going on with my company and work and my activities here on the block chain as witness, pal/msp discord mod, msp waves radio station co-founder and director/general manager, and with my radio shows and blog posting and all the user-to-user direct support and mentoring and coaching and learning and experiencing that goes on here, that I've fallen down on my "self-care". I no longer eat or sleep on any kind of normal schedule, I've had some minor health issues that could have been much worse as a result and I've started slipping on some major responsibilities as well.
I have two dogs. I also had a homeless veteran friend who asked if they could stay on my 17 acre property. Since I needed a dog-sitter to manage my beloved pets while I dove into all these selfish activities intending to work towards creating a more stable world for myself and a stronger future legacy for my lovely 25 year old daughter, whom I am basically estranged from, because of a lifetime of mistakes I'm famous for making, I invited this homeless friend to stay on my land and care for my dogs.
Unfortunately I trusted my friend who in turn did not really follow through on the care of my pets in a holistic way for the past two months and I've now spent the last week with my dogs in the hospital with a combination of flea infestations, internal parasites and in one of the two dogs cases, heartworms.
I am heartbroken over their condition and the financial burden of approximately just over $2000.00 in veterinary bills has been a tough lesson. The lesson reminder here of course is that it's always a management problem. Yes my "friend" whom I have now had to evict and lose as a friend in the process, is responsible for the neglect, but really, are THEY? Or Am I? I think I am.
These are my pets, not hers, and I am ultimately responsible for their care and management. So it's a management problem, squarely the result of my mismanagement of the situation. I am now paying the price, financially and spiritually.
Thanks to my bad planning, my own personal management problems, my shortcomings and other mistakes I have made in life prior to now, I have had to have help with the money to pay for the unplanned for vet bills and despite all my failures to each of them in turn at some point, a couple of truly wonderful friends have sent me some funds to help heal the doggies I love and get them back to their happy, healthy conditions.
I am on my knees with gratitude to these people, who include one man I really haven't even solidly known for two months yet and one of the women I just got done telling you about loving so much and yet continuously failing over and over.. and over and over... again.
Deep bonds, made quickly. That's pal/msp and the kinds of people I call my new family there. It's humiliating at times, how I've behaved, and how I am still accepted by them.
I have missed important meetings related to my career and the company I own outside the steem eco-system in the real world by oversleeping and neglect of my personal life caused solely from the exhaustion of trying to be all things to all people all the time and in turn failing at times to be much of anything to anybody effectively.
I have let a lot of things go unmanaged. I am paying the price on multiple levels in multiple ways for this neglect. I am feeling those impacts now, and luckily, seem to be experiencing a burst of awareness that is fueling a drive to start fixing things as fast as possible, which in turn may cause even more problems. The balance between hurry up and slow down is a very difficult thing to assess and act upon in the right ways.
Life and adulting are fucking HARD, okay? But I'm trying. I'm trying so hard.
There are lessons to be learned from everything. I'm working on them as hard as I can, and sometimes that still just isn't good enough. But no amateur is ever good enough to be a professional until they practice, right? So I will keep practicing.
I am here to beg for forgiveness and to promise to try harder
Isn't earnestly trying and giving life their best shot all anybody can do? Should do?
I am pretty sure It's all I can do. It's definitely what I should do!
If you are the praying type. Please pray for me to learn how to act. If you aren't well, do whatever you do to project some good luck and healing energy my way. I have fears, jealousies, and selfishness issues to work on. I have shortcomings I cannot even see in myself to address. I'm a moving target, trying to pin myself down and button myself up. Any advice, help or suggestions are welcome. Let's see if I can take them in and not fuck them up too.
The only stats that matter to me are to be loved and accepted by those I love and admire and respect. All the other numbers are meaningless. You can't take your steem wallet to your graves, but with any luck, someone will have loved you before you got there anyway. That's what really matters most. Are you proud of your behavior at the end of the day? Or is there room for improvement?
There is always room for improvement. There is always a better way to act. It won't be easy for someone with my weak spots and blind spots to get this right. Just please forgive me when I fuck it all up. Know my heart was trying to love too hard and maybe it broke things with the misguided application of it's strength. Or maybe I was just lost and out of control. Help me get back on the path when that happens. I'm trusting you, fam. I'll try to return the favor, but I might fuck it up.
I guess we will just see have to wait and see how it all goes.
To all of you whom I have let down, in distant and recent pasts and whom I will let down again in the future.
I am sorry. I hope you can forgive me. I've been told I need to learn to forgive myself, but I fear I cannot, until you can forgive me too. If you cannot forgive me, I will never be able to forgive myself.
Sincerely yours truly with all my mistake-prone angst and love,
@SirCork
PS: Maybe we should leave on a half-hearted attempt at seeing the humor in it all, eh?
I am not using my usual signature lines and footer on this post, because this is not a typical blog entry. This is a letter to my friends and family here and it didn't feel right to use my usual branding format on it this note from my heart.
I dont know if this post should be appreciated or not. I feel sad for your friends but i also appreciate that at least you accepted your faults. But still, I feel very sad for your friends.
:(
I do too.
Just as long as you step upwards and onwards friend.
We love you, keep the balance, keep looking after you along with your other more altruistic interests.
Take care of your friends, take care of your family. But most importantly, look after yourself.
Just try not to hurt anyone along the way.
And I think you expressed just the right kind of shame here. I wonder if @uniwhisp would agree. Haha
Much love.
<3
I hope she might. She's the resident expert on the feelz.
Thanks Sammbro <3
Nice one Corky. Holding your hand up and admitting you fucked up isn't as easy as people think. Well done buddy.
I have no choice but to try and right my wrongs and be accountable. The rest is up to the injured parties and their grace and forgiveness.
James 5:16
Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.
You're good Corky. Now, the road is ahead. No looking back!
Thanks. I saw this while searching for my post images. I'll just leave it here. More for me than for you.
Deep, man.
I really felt you on this.
Compassion for self while evaluating all of that life-stuff sure is a delicate negotiation and I agree that love and forgiveness are pretty much everything.
Thank you for sharing your details about the 3 months you've grown into this community and what it has been like. I have been here about 5 days now and have made some mistakes and fixes, as well as a few friends who have been helping me along the way.
I'm inspired by this post and your account of what your time here has been like.
You got mad love from this noob, Sir Cork!
Get thee to the minnow pond! https://discord.gg/ns779Gq
Gracias. I'm there! Learning and implementing.
I never think of the future - it comes soon enough.
- Albert Einstein
You are a wise old man. But I suspect you didn't become one via a lack of planning :)
Long over due and much appreciated as are all apologies. I am sure many will forgive you and many will wait to see your actions match your words.
Looking forward to seeing your progress and please understand perfection isn't requested. As I'm sure you are experiencing and will continue to are the repercussions from living in unbalance. This is a step in achieving balance.
Maybe your next post can be an action plan on how you plan to achieve balance, this way we can actively help you and hold you accountable. If this will help, I highly encourage it. These are merely suggestions. In the mean time, we got you in prayer.
Damn Kub it's already hard. Homework? You may be a tougher teacher than life itself, kid. <3
She's just looking our for you on the long view. These kinds of "points in time" are really important, but can be wasted if there isn't a bigger plan to stop repeating mistakes and tackle the sources of the behavior. Treating symptoms never heals us from the disease.
Rooting for you!
Solid support for the homework. Thanks Lances.
they are asking if you wanna grow up.
I say think carefully, as it's well known to be a trap.
they just aren't wanting to tell you that.
I wrote this the other day and just found it here unposted
Here are my thanks, return posted ;)
Congratulations for your success! Happy to meet you in this platform.. Expecting more valuable advices whenever want.. from you friend!
Thanks, but this post was not about success. It was very much about failure.
Yes friend... I believe in the saying. "failure is the pillar of success".Now where you are standing.. getting such a rank is not an easy task... So, I accept you as a successful person.. Even your failure you never want to flew from here.. it is possible for a confident person only... And which have emense power of confidence, he can never be defeated, or failure... This is all about, of accepting you as a successful person!
I feel the love in your remarks and I'm wrapping myself in it. I don't know you other than from a comment here and there along the way. Which makes moment even MORE valuable. Thank you for your kind words. <3
Friend your loving words make me impressed.. Wish you have a pleasant time ahead!
No. YOUR loving words are the impressive thing here. So kind. May you be blessed in all things, you seem to be very deserving!
Thanks a lot friend!
There is no failure - only the recognition that one thing didn't work - and another does - which then leads to success...
Thank you, with all due respect and love prepaid upon receipt.
my view, as a person who has made many many mistakes, is that I understand. I understand trying too hard and failing. I understand the heartache in believing the one thing you really wanted more than anything else in the world would never be yours because you tried and failed. I understand wanting forgiveness from someone I cared for more than life and not receiving it. not because I wasn't worthy of forgiveness, but because of the other persons fear of being hurt again. both sides are understandable.
the thing is, shit happens. we are all of us imperfect human beings. we do the best we can and have to live with the results when we fail. we have to deal with the result of our anger and fear when it escapes and takes over our common sense. we have to live with illness because we don't take care of our health, and we will deal with our friends dying before us if we do take care. sometimes life seems like a lose lose proposition.
our friends and family are the most precious things we have. and our fear of losing them is our worst enemy because it makes us do fucked up things. my advice, (so easy to give, so hard to take or do for myself), is forgive yourself. and down the road, forgive others. as sammo exemplified in chat today, pay it forward. at the same time, try not to expect miracles, because no one expects them of you. we are all talking to ourselves in our minds, counting the 1001 ways we have fucked up. look at the patterns, and try to work on them. breathe, and let go.
That was so beautifully written. It is amazing how each new retelling of the same truth hits me harder.
I have tears in my eyes
You almost make me not want to go trollin' today, as I was going to
almost
Breathe.
Now do it again.
AGAIN!
Yeah.
One foot in front of the other, right?
Love you Tor, thanks for that up there. You got it all right. And I appreciate you coming here and taking the time to remind me. Thanks... for listening. ;)
sure. everyone needs a fan base.
I'm your biggest fan too! <3
hahaha sir u may be my only fan :p
I know like at least one other person that likes you too. Hehe, don't be greedy :D
maybe doubly so
I am a little wounded
I don't know you at all except for the 10 minutes of DMs we shared when I couldn't start streaming @jimitation's radio show. I thought you were a knight in shining armor and what came across to me on Discord more than anything else during those 10 minutes was that you CARED. The situation didn't matter at all in an "ultimately" sense, but you made a huge impression on me in the way you reacted to it. So thank you.
Wow, we had a radio issue and I was nice about it?
Hrm. That's unusual.
No, seriously, you totes just got lucky, that time.
Great post @sircork ...blessings to you
Not seeking greatness, but to study how un-great I can often be. Thanks for reading and the blessings. May your day be wonderful, easy and blessed as well!
That was beautiful. Made me tear up 😢. But whatever you have done wrong (unconsciously) or hurtful, you stepped back and became aware, the observer, not who you truly are. That's a beautiful thing.
It made me tear up too. There's been quite a bit of that in my life lately. But caution, just when we think we are most aware, we are usually the most blind. Just a lil note to self.
meep
I'm sorry meep, here, take a tissue. We're all a little teared up too man. It's okay. Let it meep.
meep
Man, Cork.
So much of what you've written here, I completely identify with. It's a very difficult thing, to manage all of this. Especially the parts you can't control. I was saying to a friend recently--"it's like trying to hold sand in your hand: the harder you squeeze onto it, the more that slips through your fingers."
I understand the drinking too much. And the making an ass of oneself in public. Right here. On Discord too. And it's the worst kind of humiliation.
I feel so much of the hurt you have expressed in this courageously authentic post, that as I type, I'm moved to tears trying to think of some reassuring words to say to a new friend.
I do want you to know that you can always talk to me as a friend. I hear the sincerity in your voice, each time you're on the radio, and I read the words of stark honesty in your posts. You are a good person, Corky. With a tremendous heart.
I hope that you will find a life/work balance soon. Being this tired and depleted isn't good for you. And I pray that you will enter into a less tumultuous period of time, if for no other reason than to be able to catch your breath..
I'm praying you get all the great things in life we all know you deserve. You're much too hard on yourself, in my opinion.
I'll say it again: "You are a GOOD person"
~County
Lock me up in Jane County Jail for awhile, and rehabilitate me with that loving kindness. Thank you Jane, I'm sorry my writing prompted tears, we're all in this together. Swim for your life, minnows, and stay in school!
Thanks. Seriously, "county" ;) <3
-cork
wow corky, once again, I am sufficiently out of the loop to have missed to the action and have no real idea of what went down.
but it sounds like you are awake, and that's a really big part of the battle.
you have here a virtual hug, and I forgive you for ignoring my very witty comment at 23:45:17 on the 27th of August.
Although I was miffed at the time
mistakes get made
Oh spainga You silly spainga. We can talk directly, We know mistakes get made and mistakes will be made both mean, basically, shit happens. <3