More reps...

Have you ever done something, knowing that as you go into it, you're going to fail?

It's a rough feeling, and no matter how prepared you are for a possible failure, it still hurts.

I walked into such a situation today, professionally. Now, I'm still trying to pick myself up. I feel right now like all of the confidence and progress that had been built up has taken a hit. More or less, I'm down in the dumps. It sucks.

It may be a cliche topic, but still one worth visiting. I'm not going to lie, it's going to take a while to get back up, but they always say it's how you bounce back that matters most. I'm here to tell you, failing sucks. My greatest fear in this world is failure, and it brings me down every time it knocks me down.

Sometimes, you're in a situation that is designed for you to fail. You can fail by succeeding. I may be in that situation right now. But is it best to totally avoid failure and not take a chance that you may open a door and meet it again?

Today, I got some positive feedback, a ton of fair, professional criticism, and two types of challenges. The first type of challenge was the surface, verbal challenge. My boss challenged me to simply get more reps. Well, I say simply but there's nothing easy about it. I spend a ton of time up there while I'm on the clock, and a fair amount of my own time up there. He wants more. I don't know where I'm going to find more, with all of my other jobs and commitments, but there's the challenge, get more reps.

I can take this into basketball terms, sometimes an athlete needs more reps, more practice. Whether in an offensive scheme, or on a particular skill, or whatever. To get better, a player needs more reps, and a lot of those reps have to come on your own time. I get it.

Then, there's the second type of challenge. It's subliminal, it's part of growing as a journalist, and it's necessary for success. That challenge is, how do you deal with failure? How do you get back up?

Honestly, I've been down all afternoon. I went to the one place that I can always go, the basketball court. I forgot about how bad I felt, but I won't lie, I was at times very average today as a player. I had my good spots and great plays, but the lack of confidence crept in at times to, and led to missed shots, lack of aggression, and other things. I even got busted open by and elbow to the mouth, and that wasn't even enough to get me fully into it.

At the end of the day, we all need more reps. It's no secret that to be good at something, you have to put the time into it. Sometimes, we feel like we do this, but we really aren't. I'm here to tell you that failure sucks. This isn't the first time I've met it head on, and it won't be the last. It's o.k. to if it bugs you and takes you down for a little bit, but at some point, you get over it. Maybe I just needed to hear that from myself.

Life's a roller coaster, it's cliche but it's true. Enjoy the highs, hate the lows, but as long as you're still feeling, I guess you're making progress. I'm thankful for failure, take the blame on myself, and now I have to do something about it. And it sucks. I've been through worse, so now it's time to get more reps.