flexagon | Tae kwon depressing-o

So I draaaaggggged myself to tae kwon do after a week of avoiding it like an infectious disease (out of sheer humiliation, though the stitches have sure been a handy excuse). My friends who tested last night weren't there, thank goodness, so it was mostly just me and the other losers. I didn't do that well and felt no better for going--I'm in a bad bad spiral of feeling too bad to focus, which means that of course I won't get better. It's weird because I didn't think I was doing any worse than the people who tested; but clearly I am, which is bad news because it means that not only am I not doing well, but my judgement sucks more than I do. Great, given the amount of feedback we get... just great. I've got to get over my jealousy/arrogance/humiliation and focus on making myself better, but I seem to be in no emotional state to do it right now. It's really going to sting to see my friends with their blue stripes. I always liked the way progress is so visible in TKD... never really had to think before about how visible someone's lack of progress can be, too. It can't be true (say a few badly outnumbered neurons in my left brain) but I really feel like everyone's noticing how badly I'm doing right now. Staring at me, laughing, pointing and all that.

Now, I do have a tiny bit of perspective left; if I have to feel this bad about one of the following--work, A or tae kwon do--I'll take the tae kwon do. This has been a bit of a rough year so far in terms of times I've completely dreaded facing one of those 3 things. But now the other two are okay. After TKD I came home and cried briefly on A, and he listened, and it helped a lot. There are great things in my life and at some point I'll get my focus back. But I sure don't have it at the moment. And I have this terrible fear that I really do suck, so much that no amount of focus is going to help. Ouch... let it not be true.