A BIG LET-DOWN

I left a couple of friends hanging today.  Never mind that it was an 
honest mistake, it was a fairly big screw-up on my end.  The 
inconvenience factor was high, since getting together on the chat (it 
was a phone call) was rather a big effort for at least one of them, and 
I believe the other had to do some major scheduling mojo to make it all 
work.  Not cool, in other words.

We all screw up from time-to-time.  Certainly, I know this from 
experience.  We all have moments of forgetfulness, or, as in my case, a 
lack of foresight (I should have at least set an alarm or alert or 
something).  And the best we can do is own up to it, and apologize.  The 
thing is, at times like this, you can wonder how to make a boner into a 
plus -- you know, turning lemons into lemonade?  And I think the sad 
fact is, no amount of feel-good platitudes can erase the mistake, and no 
amount of mental dexterity can transmute it into gold when the sole 
opportunity to do well was effectively wedged into people's lives to 
begin with.  When there's no wiggle room, mistakes are permanent and 
sometimes grand.

In this case, it's not quite that bad, but it was certainly a 
rude-seeming thing on my part -- at least from the other points-of-view 
-- and doubtlessly a real annoyance to them.  Sometimes all you can do 
is go on.  All you can do is be the asshole for a while, and try to win 
back trust, if it's gone, or take their gentle ribbing as your due if 
it's not.  And sometimes, it falls somewhere in the middle, such that, 
now, no one is sure where you stand.  Are you a jerk?  Are you 
incompetent?  Are you too distracted to be trustworthy?  The answer 
could be none of these things, but all you've got is the "now", and, if 
you're lucky, a tomorrow or two: what you had, the credit built up from 
a history of dependability, has been called into question at the least.  
Maybe it's not gone or even tarnished, but then again, maybe it is.  The 
point here, is that you can't rely on it as much as before.  You "owe" 
them, or you have to "make it up to them" or some other such thing that 
seems like you can put paid on a debt.  But we all know that it's not 
quite that simple.  There isn't anything that will remove a mistake from 
your personal history, nor should there be: if we can't at least LEARN 
from them, there seems hardly any reason for free will at all.  If I use 
this moment to improve myself, even by a tiny bit, then the screw-up 
might not happen again.  If I don't, then it might.  Hell, it might 
anyway, but THAT, on its own, would be telling.

I'm not beating myself up over this, despite how this might read.  But a 
bit of reflection never hurt anybody, especially after a mistake has 
been made.  Since such things can repeat themselves, and hurt or 
disappoint others accordingly, being more aware of them hardly seems an 
over-reaction.  Owning up is, first and foremost, about improving 
oneself.  It's about apologizing and smoothing feathers too, but the 
real good comes from the admission, and the acknowledgment that a 
mistake has occurred -- because if it happened once, it could happen 
again.  And I guess, after all, that IS a good thing of a kind: lemonade 
from lemons, maybe, but tart and unrefreshing.  I'll not have seconds, 
thank you.