May 13, 2022 – The Sixty-Fifth Official Friday Night BeerBlog

Happy Friday the Thirteenth! I actually cannot believe that last week wasn’t Friday the 13th because I screwed it up, but good. A cornucopia of fuck-ups if you will. I will explain, but let’s make sure we know what the line is between a good ole fuck-up and a fatal error.

The Difference Between Life And Death

There is actually a monumental difference between a fuck up and fucking up. Fuck-ups or just plain ole mistakes, while they may leave a mark, are usually accidental and can usually be forgotten with time. Fucking up requires making a fatal error that could be just that. Fatal. These are based on decisions made that causes some sort of harm to self or others or both.

Drinking to excess, driving your car, and crashing is a fatal error. Wanting to take selfie at the edge of cliff, getting too close, and falling over is a fatal error. Wanting to look cool to your friends by buzzing cyclists on the road, but hitting one of all of them is a fatal error.

Fatal errors change the total direction of life. In an instant. Thankfully, this blog is about your run of the mill fuck-up. We make these kind of mistakes all the time, but then punish ourselves just as harsh as if we committed a fatal error. We hash and rehash and won’t let it die.

Where Is FNBB 64?

Last Friday night wasn’t my finest moment. Mike wasn’t feeling well, but we sat down to record the Friday Night BeerBlog anyway. We finished and I did what I thought was my due diligence to make sure that it was posted in all the right places. I take great pride in my consistency so that we are able to bring this production to you every week.

Monday morning as I was closing out some internet tabs, I came across the llmcshane blog page. Now normally I would have just closed it, but the PUBLISH NOW button read out at me from the top right hand corner. Lo and behold I had never PUBLISHED the blog. Now, I will admit that I have done this once before, but was happy that at least the FNBB podcast was up. No worries, I published immediately.

Monday afternoon I was putting together my weekly email and went to grab the link to the FNBB 64 podcast I found that it was 55 minutes long. HUH? Mike talks a lot, but no FNBB has ever been over 20ish minutes. I couldn’t figure it out. I refreshed my host browser. Maybe it was just a mistake.

Sneak Peak

It obviously was meant to be there, so I clicked the link. NO NO NO, it was the wrong podcast. It was the file of this Wednesday’s podcast that I had just finished editing Friday afternoon. I had published it under the name of FNBB 64. Not only had I screwed up posting the blog, but I had uploaded the wrong podcast episode. And I was none the wiser. For days. Everyone that listened must have been so confused.

I couldn’t believe I had fucked this up so bad. But then I remembered that only 8 people listen to the FNBB, so I figured it was all good. Just kidding, kinda. But what do you do? How do you get yourself out of this mess? How do you go about dealing with and fixing a fuck-up?

To Freak Out Or To Not Freak Out

I totally could have freaked. I mean if you have listened to the mother’s day episode with my mom, she was quick to explain what a perfectionist over-achiever I am. And while I own that title to a point, I knew there was nothing that could be done about the past three days and that I just had to right the ship as much as possible to keep plowing forward.

Beating myself up would have been something I may have done for days at one point, but the new and improved version of me knows that would have gotten me nowhere and even further behind schedule. The biggest thing that I have learned in the last few years is to just own it, apologize if warranted, don’t point fingers, and start to fix it immediately. So many of us just want to hang onto the things we do wrong. We are much harder on ourselves than anyone else could be. And because we can’t be perfect, we decide not to do anything. That is no way to live.

Oh Well

I took down the wrong episode immediately and reposted FNBB 64 with the word NEW at the end so people who had already listened to the “sneak peak” would know that THIS was the actual episode. Apologies to anyone who may have been confused and consider yourself lucky having heard Eunice Ray early, cause she’s awesome.

As should be done with every mistake, I asked myself what I could do differently and what did I learn? I made a very serious mental note to not rush and double check these things in the moment. Don’t leave it all up to chance especially when you are juggling so many balls at once. Sometimes something you have done a million times becomes that ball that gets dropped. You have to be intentional in everything or a fuck-up is going to happen.

And if (and when) this happens again, please, one of the eight of you let me know for God sake!

LLM

LOOOK!! I’m remembering….LINK to the podcast version!

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1594894/10614701