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I'm Major Jackson and this is the slowdown. Have you ever told what you thought was a funny story yet struggled to get the timeline right,

or maybe you forgot who did what and when,

and then had to double back.

And when you lost grit,

that's when you sense your audience becoming impatient,

secretly wishing you would get to the punchline or point of the story.

But then, by the time you eased into your Aesop group, of the

opportunity to charm opportunity to charm vanished.

I never have that problem.

Actually, I have that problem all the time.

Enough that I nearly enrolled in a storytelling class.

I am afflicted with the idea that I must be perfect at everything and thus I go all out to achieve

flawlessness. I read manuals, watch endless YouTube videos, enroll in on-the-fly courses.

I measure my growth by my last failure.

I am told this has to do with my astrological sign.

I live with Roca's famous line, You Must Change Your Life in my ear on repeat an earworm as if something is

less than stellar about who I am today. I move instinctively towards myself as though I were a massive project, believing I will

someday, again in Rilka's words, burst like a star, that this is how to be seen to be loved to be cherished.

...