Personal History - Stress and Fear and Their Lingering Effects

What is the most stressful experience you ever lived through?

Pregnancy and childbirth - and yes, some of you might be thinking, "Oh, but it's such a beautiful time" or "I felt terrific, empowered, etc."

Yes, and I felt those things too. Some of the time.

But when you're trying to make a family work under poverty conditions, those good feelings really don't last long. And then you feel guilty that everyone else is enjoying pregnancy, and you're not, and you might be hurting the baby because you're not.

And then you're really not enjoying yourself.

Because, from where I was at at the time, it was uncertain, and stressful, and frightening, and inconvenient, and I felt like a beluga whale instead of a woman.

You know what got me through it?

God, a good and reassuring husband and family, and warm showers and journals.

I can't even re-read those journals today. I tried. Brings it all back. But I still love showers.


What is the scariest thing that ever happened to you?

The movie 'Jaws'. When I was six.

No six-year-old should see that movie. I don't care what the rating says. We watched it again this weekend, and it still made me jump. And ever more determined never to swim in the ocean or any other body of water I can't see into. And logically I know the statistics - more likely to be struck by lightning or get into a car accident than killed by a shark.

My chances are even slimmer than that - because I'm never going in the ocean in the first place.

I've never been in the ocean any deeper than my ankles, and I never plan to. If I ever am on accident, I am prepared as possible - I know how to smack a shark in the snout when attacked, and how to make myself look less like a seal, and...

Well, if the worst happens, I can always die...just in case my brain ever tries to resurrect those shark attack dreams. I'll probably just die. Jump headfirst in its mouth, or something like that. Who wants to live through something like that?

Personal History - Choices and Influences

What were the hardest choices you ever had to make?

Trump vs. Clinton...an incredibly hard and complicated choice.

What person really changed the course of your life by something he/she did?

My sister-in-law Sarah Eden, and I don't think I've ever mentioned it to her, or anyone really.

I always wanted to write, ever since I was a small child, and I was just about to give up on writing, because I didn't feel that the climate of the culture would accept anything I wrote. I don't do 'edgy and gritty' very well, and everything I saw seemed to be going in that direction.

After Sarah married my brother, she started writing these historical romance novels, and she started succeeding at it, in a big way.

Her example gave me a lot of encouragement and hope that I could be myself, and still find success and fulfillment in the public sphere as a writer, and that it was okay to even call myself a writer, which I had a hard time doing that before.

In that same vein, Stephanie Meyer as well. Her story 'Twilight', while maybe not technically the best story ever written, spoke to me emotionally very deeply in a critical way I'd never been able to tap into before. I left the movie in a daze, read the book (all the books), and proceeded to write my own novel, 'Sanctuary'. It wasn't the only input I used on that novel, but those two experiences were the catalyst for me.

And of course, I have to mention my mother. Her influence was and continues to be transformative for me. Glad to still have her around, as of this writing, and (hopefully) for a long time to come.

Do you remember any advice or comments that had a big impact on how you lived your life?

Don't remember anything in detail, but there's been a lot of it in my life.

I'm very into self-help books, talks, seminars - read and listen to them all the time, and I internalize a lot of it. I also do a lot of scriptural and religious reading, and that impacts me daily in a lot of little ways.

If you could change something about yourself, what would it be?

Eat less sugar - I just feel better when I reel it in. Working on that right now, in fact.

Personal History - The 'Friend' Conundrum

Name a good friend you have known the longest. How many years have you been friends?

Now, this question is hard for me.

Not because I don't have friends. I have numerous friends and acquaintances I'm very fond of.

But in another sense, I don't have 'good friends'.

Not in the sense like, someone who knows me inside and out and would do anything for me.

I don't have those types of friends, and I don't know why. I have some theories, but I don't know for sure. Might never really know.

The Quiet Child
 

As a young child, I always felt separate from other people in some way. I spent a lot of time alone, having whole conversations that I knew were in my mind, but when it came to having real conversations with real people, there was a sort of disconnect for me. They were the quantum physics beneath the order of the visible universe, slippery and unpredictable. I wanted everything ordered.

I could talk to anyone in my home about anything, and I did. But at school, at church, anywhere outside my home - silence. The thought of sharing anything was too stressful, since I didn't really know them, or how they would react. So I was the great Stone Face in public. A very, very solitary child.

I didn't like it. I wanted to talk as easily as everyone else seemed to. They were making friends, and I could not. This was a problem I spent a lot of time pondering.

First of all, it made me very vulnerable to bullies - I was targeted from a very early age. It also made me vulnerable to people choosing me as their friends, whom I didn't really want to befriend, but who I would cling to because the alternative of no friends was more terrible.

Second, I did want to get to know people better, but I felt so painfully aware of my inability to converse that it was easier not to. Mentally, I lived in a black box I could not break myself out of, and I knew if I stayed there, I would probably harm myself.

Songbird

So I got desperate, and I joined the school choir in middle school.

I'd sung in church and on the radio long enough to know I had a good voice. I had a good enough voice that I could audition for the advanced choirs, and get in. So I sang my heart out, and it helped. I faced the frightening prospect of singing in front of people, and got through that terror and embarrassment.  I even had people who knew my name, and would say something to me now and again, like real friends. Now I could perform, but my singing voice wasn't my speaking voice. I couldn't exactly sing in class.

I spoke so infrequently, in fact, that the sound of my own voice in my ears surprised me, and I would retreat again when called upon to speak, because I didn't recognize these sounds in this environment.

This continued clear up through the middle of high school, when I moved to Maryland - again, ripping up roots and starting all over again. So, so hard for me to do that, but we did it every few years. My dad liked moving.

Drama Queen

I had to do something even more desperate next - I joined drama class in my last two years of high school.

Drama wasn't singing - it was talking, and conversing in a controlled, scripted way. I thrived on that as well. The people in drama weren't afraid to talk, and they weren't formal about it, so I started making friends with people I really liked. I thought I'd finally conquered my little black box.

But no...

Drama became the only class where I talked - I still couldn't make friends or talk in any other class, to my eternal frustration. This led me to believe that the only place I could be 'normal' was in a drama environment, so I decided to become an actress.

Long Letters from the Edge

When I moved to New York, my friends at home wanted to write to me, so I wrote lots of letters, to my family and my friends...anyone who would write to me. This felt much more comfortable to me, because I could craft what I wanted to say, and sound so much more intelligent and witty than I did in a face-to-face or phone conversation, where I couldn't control what was happening so much.

The problem with letters was that no one wrote as much as I did, or in such detail. So soon they would taper off, with their apologies that they were terrible at writing, and I was alone again.

I didn't stop writing letters though. I met and married my husband through letters. I had to quit drama eventually though, because I didn't like people staring at me, and I was getting called upon to do improv work, which I hated. If I couldn't get scripted work AND control that script, I didn't want any part of it.

The Internet Introvert

Then the Internet plodded by, and I jumped on eagerly. Social media? That's for me, boy! I made friends like crazy - all I had to do was be witty and nice in short posts, and friends flocked to me. Many friends were even people I'd never met in real life, and still have never met to this day. It was exhilarating!


But not enough. There's a different, more robust energy to talking in person with someone, but it's these interactions that are much harder to manage for me. Again, pieces of the puzzle were missing.


Today

Probably my mother and my husband are my best and longest friends - my mother for my entire life, and my husband for about a quarter of a century now. I talk more at home than I do out of my home, and more online than I do in real life, although now small talk no longer holds the same terror for me it once did.  At my work and at church, I'm still mostly silent, and I still feel guilty about that somewhat, though I don't need to talk on a regular basis. Church is a little bit better than work.


Church and work people know a lot of minutia about me, and online people know some too. My family knows more still. But my journals probably know more than that, and I don't even write everything down. I still keep a piece of myself, to myself, and only God really knows that part.

Phone calls still give me tiny anxiety attacks, and I tend to avoid them whenever I can - I still write down an outline of how I want the call to go, just to avoid those long pauses, and I still tend to rush right over people as I talk, but I'm working on that.

Talking in person can be fun, but very wearing, so I still mostly write.

Bosom Friends

I loved the movie "Anne of Green Gables" (the first one) for the relationship Anne had with Diana Barry. I tried to have relationships like that, but I never felt able to. There was always something inside that was in the way.

Honestly, I don't know if the problem is other people or me. It has to be me - other people are able to do it, and I don't know how they do it, any more than I know how my mother is able to sit down on a bus next to a total stranger, and somehow they end up talking like they're the world's oldest friends. That's a super power I will probably never have.

But I'll keep trying - I don't believe in the inevitability of any genetic-or-otherwise condition anymore.

Personal History - My Take on Politics

Do you remember your family discussing world events and politics?

I don't remember any family discussions around politics as a kid, but my second grade teacher conducted a mock election for president. She wrote 'Gerald Ford' on one side of the chalkboard, and 'Jimmy Carter' on the other side of the chalkboard, and we were supposed to pick one of these names.

I didn't know either one of these names, so I picked Gerald Ford.

Jimmy Carter won that election, and also the actual election, and I knew even back then that I was out of step with what was happening in politics, and I didn't really care.

How would you describe yourself politically? Are you conservative or liberal, and why?

My family was very conservative, so I sort of ended up as a conservative by osmosis, but that didn't mean I wasn't drawn to more liberal ideas from time to time.

As a teenager, a lot of the singers I listened to on the radio had more progressive and liberal themes, and these came out in their songs. Once I was listening to a song on the radio by Sting (how I loved that man!), and my father heard it and got angry, and I got a lecture on how what he was singing about was stupid. I didn't think it was stupid - what was wrong with singing about the Russians and world peace? It became one more of many wedges between us.


Today, the best way I could describe myself politically is as a centrist - I identify as neither Republican, nor Democrat. Looked into Libertarian, but I'm not that either. Too extreme. I'm right in the middle of all of these organized forces, and so I am adequately represented by exactly nobody.

There's only one public figure who even comes close to how I feel most of the time politically. His name is Arthur Brooks, and he used to be the president of a conservative think tank in Washington called AEI.

This TED talk helped me survive the last presidential election with some sort measure of hope, that maybe I wasn't the only person in the world who was centrally caught between gigantic, cataclysmic political forces in the world - the Clinton/Trump election was a year-long ordeal for me, and every election just feels like it's getting worse.

I read Arthur Brooks' book, Compassionate Conservativism. Loved it. I listen to his podcast now, and when and if he ever gets a job at a university, I would be sorely tempted to move there and take all his classes.

I don't like politics, anymore than my grandmother Lora did.

My grandmother lived during World War II, and wanted to do her bit for the war. She and the local Scouts in her area once collected newspapers for the war. They brought them to a ship with great enthusiasm, and stood and waved as the ship left the port with all of their hard work.

She and the Scouts continued to watch as the ship took their newspapers out to sea...dumped all the newspapers into the sea...and then returned to port for more newspapers.

She never trusted the government one inch after that experience, and neither do I.

Personal History - The Onward March of Technology

What would you consider the most important inventions you've encountered during your lifetime?

The Color TV

The first television I remember looked like this, and only showed everything in black and white. If the picture got fuzzy, you had to move the antenna around, sometimes stretching out your own body as far as you could reach...and as soon as the picture got better, your brother said, "There!" and you had to stay in whatever position you ended up in so everyone could watch TV.

Adding color was like Dorothy stepping into Oz for the first time. The world was never the same.

The VCR

For years and years, I had to time my TV watching with the TV Guide (anyone remember TV Guide?) in order not to miss my favorite shows, such as Charlie Brown Christmas. The broadcasters played it only once every year, and if you missed it, you were out of luck until next year.

We weren't the first ones to get a VCR, but we were likely the most grateful. My father went through a phase of blasting through sweepstakes, and he enlisted every kid who could to help him write out entries for these contests. I was particularly good at this skill, and even entered some of my own - won some hair care products and stuff. Still, Dad won a new VCR, when VCRs cost hundreds of dollars.

He went out and immediately started buying VCR tapes, and recording everything he could get his hands on - practically everything on television. We had hundreds of these by the time he was done, and I still have some of his recordings today, even though I have no VCR to play them on anymore.

But once we had a VCR, I never missed the Charlie Brown Christmas special ever again.

The DVD

Before DVDs, there was this thing called rewinding. If you liked a song, and wanted to listen to it again, you had to rewind the tape, or rewind the VCR to get back to what you wanted to see. Sometimes you had a counter, where you could write down where the show started and ended, and rewind to that point.

With songs, you just had to guess...and sometimes the machine ate the tape, and you'd get tape streaming out and getting tangled, and then you had to put your finger or a pencil in the tape, and hopefully wind it all back in and straight again.

DVDs had this futuristic look that was so compelling - as a teenager, I went into a music store and saw them in person for the first time. I would just hold them up to the light, and watch the rainbow reflections on the back, or see my own reflection. Couldn't afford them at that point - DVD players cost over a thousand dollars then.

After a few years, the price came down to where we could afford a player, and then rewinding was gone - heaven! How much of my life had been wasted in rewinding! Never again!

The Internet

Email became a thing in my life a little bit after the 1990s - then AOL and all its wonders. Dad bought our home computer about the same time, and tried to teach us all how to program - boring! Though I did kick myself a little later, but then or now, programming would be just boring.

The Internet has changed my life, probably more dramatically than most other technological changes. I worked online for several years, with a couple of different companies now. Facebook is a terrific way to stay in touch with family far away. I don't get newspapers thrown at my house anymore, and hardly anyone mails me letters anymore, saving thousands upon millions of trees. I was first published as a writer online.

I'm also probably more ADD than I was before, thanks to online.

Heated Seats in Cars

We bought a Volkswagon once...only once. Terrible car, but it did have one redeeming feature - heated seats.

Oh, how I loved cranking up the seats on those early mornings running the kids to their seminary classes.

Air Conditioning

Live in Texas would be impossible without it.

Love it love it love it - every summer.

Yes, I do love it so much I would marry it. If A/C were a person, he would be Benedict Cumberbatch meets the Fonz.


Amazon

My home away from home online - the website that makes it possible for me to avoid the mall entirely at Christmastime - a blessing and a godsend.

Amazon Kindle reader

A library in a box I can carry in my purse - such a beautiful thing!

Penicillin and pitocin

It is with some grudging respect that I make this nod to medical technology, but I would not be alive or human today without either of these drugs.

The penicillin got me through several infections, as well as a hospital infection that I picked up after the birth of my oldest girl.

The pitocin kept me alive after the hemorrhaging I went through after my youngest girl's birth. That was one icky experience, and the pitocin hurt worse than delivering my little girl - but I nod my head in thanks.

Personal History - A History of Close Calls, or When I Almost Never Died

Have you ever been the victim of a crime?


I was driving home from dropping off my husband at work in Washington, DC; we lived in Maryland at the time. I had three small children in car seats in the back of our minivan. The road is largely empty because rush hour is over.

All at once, a purple van pulls in front of me, super-close. I have to hit my brakes, harder and faster than I've ever hit them before, just to keep from rear-ending this purple van. I'm moving to the left to get around him, but he's moving in front of me as well, also hitting his brakes, like he wants me to hit him.

I'd never experienced anything this before. In a few seconds, I'm stopped on the side of the road, this purple van a little bit in front of me, also stopped.

A voice in my head fairly yelled at me, only one word. "Go!"

I obeyed the voice instantly. I didn't know what those people wanted. I wasn't sure if I'd hit them, but as soon as they were stopped, I took off. Got right back on the road and drove, getting closer to some other cars so there would be witnesses to whatever happened next.

The purple van, with tinted windows so I couldn't see anyone inside, also got back on the road. Drove right past me, and kept going, like nothing had happened.

I don't know what might have happened to me, or my kids, or my car that day. Just glad it didn't. It did provide great fodder for my book, though - a similar incident plagued my main character - but with much more dramatic results, of course.

Have you ever been in a serious accident?

All my accidents were serious - all three of them - but only seriously disabling to my ego. Never anything else. They all happened within nine months of each other. I thought I was jinxed.

The first one, I went to make a U-turn from the middle lane, right in front of another car I didn't know was there. That was the scariest one too - my kids were in the back of the car at the time. Fortunately, they were all right, but we sustained some body damage, and our insurance took a hit.

The second one hurt the most, one month later - got rear-ended in the rain by an uninsured driver. Well, he had insurance, but they weren't about to pay me anything, so he might as well have been uninsured. Had a tiny bit of whiplash headache from that one. He only hit me at about 20mph. Again, my insurance blamed me and we paid.

The third time was only three months after that. I was pulling out of the parking lot at the library, and got clipped by someone passing by me. Again, the terrible sinking feeling of 'where's my insurance and license? How much is this going to cost?" I scratched the paint on their car, they took out my rear light. The scratch on their car cost my insurance $600, and cost me my insurance.

I didn't drive for about a year after that, until we switched insurance companies and I got insured again. Been totally clean ever since.

Has anyone ever saved your life?

When I was 12, I went on a big trip with all the young people from my church - a hike through the Zion Narrows in Utah. It's only 13 miles, they said. I'll be fun, they said.

It wasn't fun, clinging to a small ledge next to a waterfall, unable to move forward, all alone in a very unforgiving wilderness. My brother and another adult leader came along in the nick of time. Never in my life had I been so happy to see him, before or since.

Have you ever been hospitalized? If so, what for?

When I was seven years old, my kidneys nearly shut down. Peeing blood is, apparently, not normal, and neither is that constant pain in the back.

I had to stand inside a big trash bag while the doctors performed tests. Sticking tubes in me, and standing next to large machines was never my favorite activity.


I learned that drinking water on a regular basis was not an optional thing. I almost never ate vegetables back then, so my diet was completely devoid of water, and my kidneys didn't like it. If it meant staying out of the hospital, I was all over that. Now I drink tons of water and veggie juice and eat veggies whenever possible - have for years.

Have you ever had surgery?

When I got a job in Seattle, Washington around age 21, I splurged on a gym membership, which was so exciting. I could swim, I could look at the weight machines and wonder what they were for, I could run on that treadmill and feel like a million bucks until it got super-boring.

When I showered, I got another bonus - plantar warts.

Yeah, no one ever told me that there was fungus in the locker room showers, and I needed to wear water shoes in such situations. That happy little fungus was all over my bare virgin flesh.

So the warts grew...and they grew enthusiastically...until I could no longer walk without limping. It was like tiny nails that grew into bigger nails, being driven into the nerves of my feet. When I had to wear crutches in the office, my boss recommended a foot doctor to me.

A month later, I treated myself again to a bout of foot surgery. There were ten plantar warts on both of my feet that needed to be removed, and the doctor did so swiftly. I was awake the entire time, and not so crazy about that part, but anything was worth the relief at that point.

The surgery worked. The doctor warned me that it might not, and today, there's still one tiny dormant plantar wart on the bottom of one foot, but it's never grown any larger in the last 20 years and doesn't hurt at all, so I don't mind it. Just glad they're gone.

Personal History - The Beams in My Eyes

Do you have any bad habits now or in the past?

Oh man...these are hard to admit to...but since the online world tends to gloss over those things that are negative, it's important that my descendants understand that I was not (GASP!) perfect.

No one ever thinks that anyone with a bust in marble, like Thomas Jefferson, might have ever had a bad habit of picking his nose or picking at scars...but let's face it. He probably did, and it didn't make him any less serviceable to humanity or history as a result.

Fortunately, the really bad habits (like cheating, abusive ways of communicating, stealing, or violence) I've been able to largely steer clear of, thanks to the influence of my family and my religion - although there were those grapes in the grocery store when I was five...they just looked so good...

So it's time to face (sigh) at least of short list of my own personal failings, some of which are past, and some of which I still struggle with.

Hygiene issues

This took some doing to learn, as it probably does for most people. I was a wild child, and the wonders of soap and deodorant and toothpaste took some time to get used to and really consistent with . If I've ever offended anyone in this regard, I officially, publicly apologize now. I'm pretty sure I probably have, although most people will never tell you if this happens (including me).

It took a loved one (i.e. hubby, who has the nose of a bloodhound) who gently made some corrections that were greatly needed, and (I hope) this one is no longer a problem.

Irresponsible Consumption of Sugar

It's my own personal theory that the body has a lifetime tolerance for sugar, and I probably exceeded mine someone in my mid-20s.

As a young child, it was not uncommon for me to take off for the local 7-11 whenever I had even a little bit of money, buy three candy bars, or three of those sugar-crusted lemon or chocolate pies (never the ones with any kind of real fruit in them, ironically), and polish them off before I even got home.

I was raised on pasta, pizza and potatoes almost exclusively, again until my mid-20s. I attempted Twinkie vegetarianism as a new college student, and the freshman 25 weren't far behind. Pretty much, I'm lucky to be alive at all anymore, and my tolerance for such indulgence is near zero now.

Eating for Many People instead of One 

Who needs pregnancy? Portion sizes? What's that? (sigh)

Still paying for that one, even today.

Toxic Comparisons

The Internet makes this habit super-easy. Can't do a back flip? In a few seconds, I can find small children doing flips on their parents' hands and feet, practically since they were a fetus.

Learning to love myself as I am? Radical idea, but one that still isn't fully realized.

Disaster-izing

My brain is a past master of this one - my most common dream is my brain dropping me into a disaster scenario and then standing back and saying, "Get out of THAT one, if you can!"

While I'm awake, and if someone goes even slightly off-plan, especially when spouse or children are for some reason mysteriously out of contact, it's really hard to keep my imagination out of the ditch with their broken and bleeding bodies, which don't actually exist...

Lack of Focus (Especially Online Addiction)

Facebook! So amazing - now I can keep track of EVERYONE, all at the same time! Wait - what was that? A video about cats? Awwwwwwwww...now, how did I lose the last three hours when I only needed a phone number?

Worrying about what other people think of me

This is completely not my business, yet I still worry about it. Still, getting better than I was as time goes on.

Soap Operas and Reality TV

It all started with The Young and the Restless in 1982, when Michael Damien languished in a hospital bed, suffering from some sort of uncomfortable-but-temporary terminal disease of some kind, and I was hooked for a time. It wasn't until I caught myself, literally in a muumuu with cold cream on my face and curlers in my hair, vacuuming and screaming at some stupid character that I saw my destiny, and abandoned soap operas.

It was only a matter of time, though, until binge-watching was technologically possible, and then The Biggest Loser and American Idol and Hoarders became a thing for a time. Didn't get into any others unless I found myself imprisoned in some waiting room or another, but a few of them caught my attention much more than prudence allowed.

Binge-Watching and Binge-Reading

Internet plus Netflix plus Korean dramas is a potent combination, let me tell you.

But not only that - I can lose sleep over books. Harry Potter and Stephen King shot my sleep schedule into little pieces more than a few times.

Lecturing

I have dreamed of starting my own YouTube channel one day, passing on every lecture that I wanted to give my children, and then just let the poor kids look up any particular topic they cared to, just so they could get a break from me.

Their father is worse though, so there's no escaping it entirely...

Lack of Sleep

Working desperately on this one, but my mind doesn't seem to come to life until 7pm. Either that, or my work takes so long, and I'm so happy to spend some time on my actual interests, that I'm just like the kid who bucks at going to bed early, but there's no more adults to stop me. 

Multi-Tasking

Not a real thing - not a good thing either. Still, employers ask for it, and still I try to do it. It feels productive, even though in my mind I know it really isn't. I'm able to focus when there's a deadline, but without one, it gets much harder.

Indecisiveness

So many goals, so little time. Again, it's easy to blame the Internet for this one, but really, it's all me.

Not paying attention to finances

I was in charge of the family budget for awhile. I am not anymore. There you go.

Leaving the lights on

This habit is a good one - saving energy and all that. It's a pet peeve of mine, however, to walk into a dark room on a sunny day. So I tend to leave them on.

Breaking promises to myself

If I could wave a magic wand, and remove any of these immediately and never revisit it ever again, it would be this one. Such a toxic habit, and again, doing my level best to end this one. Not being able to trust your own word to yourself is a terrible thing.

Arguing in front of the kids

This one was tragic, especially when they were little, but their papa and I had passionately-held beliefs and ways of doing things that often clashed, and the kids would run and hide, thinking their world was about to blow up. Another habit I would love to do over again.

Saying 'yes' to everything

Come to a wedding, or a vacation, where toxic family drama is liable to erupt at any time? No.
Come to this social function where you know no one? No.
Do this for someone who really should do it themselves? No.

See? I'm getting better! 

Forgetting names

I teach a Sunday School class every week, and have for years. Still, I can't remember the names of people whose faces I could never forget unless I got Alzheimer's. For some reason, the names just won't stick...sometimes people I have known for literally decades.

(sigh)

Compulsive lying

I think I got into the habit of this one as an actress; I found it really difficult to separate stage life from real life sometimes, and making up stuff just became second nature.

Not acting anymore, and not lying anymore either. This one's just so, so destructive I couldn't keep it going and have any stability at all.

**

Do you hate me now? I don't.

I have a lot of good qualities as well, believe it or not, and it's okay for me to be working on these things. Perfection is a long time coming, and regardless of how I mess up, I always do my best at the time.

Pretty much everybody does.