The true meaning of failure

I'm going to take a stab at comparing fantasy football failure to real football failure. I am in four fantasy leagues, and in each league I am in at least my fourth year in the league. That means I am well aware of the rules and regulations. I lost in these four leagues by an average of 46 points. My closest margin of defeat: 24 points. In two of the four leagues I will be in the playoffs and in one I have a good shot if I win out. In the final league, a league I've been in since 2000, I have the worst record at 2-8. One of the 3-7 teams has scored 23 points per game less than me. Of course that final part is bitterness, not failure.

Here's real failure. On Friday night I took a test for my Web certification. I took the class in August, so it had been a while. Unlike my HTML and CSS class, this was a proprietary class so I couldn't google most of the answers. I tried on Friday and scored less than 50 percent. After spending the entire night studying and thinking of ways to extend the class time, I took the test again the following morning. I finished two answers short of passage. I was in the pit of despair. I was a Lions fan. In order to take the test again, I would have to audit the class.

As fate had it, the class was happening on the same day. I pushed out and beseeched the teacher to let me audit. He let me audit the class. To my surprise, I found out that the class materials have changed since I took the class. The test was based on the new materials. Feeling better about myself, I got my test counter reset on Monday night. In my third attempt, I passed the test.

I was able to overcome despite feeling like death for a few hours. It helped that I was distracted by the Titans and a waterfall of beer on Sunday. Does this mean my fantasy teams could rebound? Not necessarily. One loss isn't the end of the world. People can move on. Even Lions fans.