#hope thats not too offensive

Going, Going, Gone

I was an arrogant prick when this all started. Perhaps fittingly, given the kind of things we’re dealing with, but that doesn’t really provide an excuse, only an explanation. I thought that the rules didn’t apply, that I could be cavalier, allow things to happen organically without planning or forethought, and common sense and a general sense of things would carry me through safely.

I was an idiot, my own brand of naive. Worse than that, I was dangerous. 

The thing about rules is not that they’re absolutes. Their purpose is not to restrict, but to offer a bit of guidance. They’re the lines of best practice, to prevent you from slipping into the gutter and missing the pins entirely. Without rules all you have is inexperience and an overeager sense of things, and that’s a volatile mixture. 

I’ve fucked up, more than once, and every time it’s happened it’s because I thought I knew better than the things I’d heard, been told. Most of the time it was innocuous enough; hurt feelings, bruised egos, nothing more, but I’m prone to dwell on the times when it could have gone even worse, properly done some damage, and the thought terrifies me. 

Rules are meant to be broken, you may have been told. But the idea behind that is not that you should disregard them entirely, but that you should learn their purpose, understand their intent, and then decide how you want to subvert and bend them. To break you need something to hold onto, and that means you have to obey the rules before you can cause any fractures.