I was once a "cantgetright"

Yep, that's right. When I first joined the Navy, my supervisors gave me the given name of "cantgetright" Meaning, no matter how much I tried, how much I knew, I just couldn't get right. Boy I really messed stuff up the first year I was on board my ship.

The Nice Guy had a rough first year aboard ship. One of my friends from home passed away while I was deployed to the persian gulf. Unfortunately, we had a falling out, and I said some really horrible things to her before I left. I never had the chance to apologize to her for the things I said.

There have been other times in my life where Justin "cantgetright" Iiams has fallen on his face and received some serious road rash. in 2005 I tried to start my own business selling printer cartridges. yeah, that was a serious failure.

In 2006, I went through a really mean divorce in which things were said on both sides, and relationships with friends and family were strained or broken. It was a very dark time in my life. I didn't like the person I was (I turned into my nemesis AKA The Badass Mean Guy), and I had no clue where I was going.

I've had thousands of failures in my life..... But here's the thing: Benjamin Frankling once said that he didn't fail 10,000 times trying to invent the lightbulb. He simply found 10,000 ways NOT to make it.

I watched the Micheal J. Fox documentary on TLC today, and the title was "Adventures of the Eternal Optimist". He said that failure isn't a bad thing. Life shouldn't come easy, otherwise it wouldn't be fun. This is a man with Parkinsons Disease, who was Teenwolf, Marty McFly, and the deputy mayor on Spin City. He's always been one of my favorite actors, and heres the reason why. No matter what life throws at him, he just shrugs it off and takes another step forward. He's the kind of guy who if given lemons, would add vodka and have a hard lemonade.

Every single time I get the "cantgetright" vibes, I think of two people. Michael J. Fox and Jimmy V who gave the "Don't give up, Don't ever give up" speech. Heres the video in case you want to watch.



So here's the bottom line. You can choose to wallow in self pity and say "woes me" OR, you can get back up, dust your shoulders off, and choose to be "CANGETRIGHT". I choose GETRIGHT and I choose to make sure failures become successes. I wish you all the best and hope you choose "Cangetright" over "Cantgetright".