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before long, find something newer and shinier that I’m sure I’ll want to make a better career out of. That, of course, lasts for a short while before something even newer and shinier appears to lure me away from my last job, and the cycle repeats itself. I should be motivated to follow through on one career path because I need the money and I’m not getting any younger, but when an idea gets into my head, there’s no room for logic, perspective, or anything else. My goal is to settle on one career path, any path, before I’m so old I should retire.
    If you had a problem with, say, constant barfing, you wouldn’t settle for feeling like a loser while resigning yourself to a life spent within ten feet of a toilet or in reach of a paper bag; you’d see a specialist, quit gluten if you had to, or at least become a master of puke jokes. That’s why the first job as a chronic fuckup is to put aside shame and blame and find out if part of the trouble is a weakness in your mental equipment.
    Most people avoid this step because it’s painful to know that something about you doesn’t work right, but doing so will save energy you’re wasting on self-blame and apology and will give you ideas about better things to do than kicking yourself.
    Incidentally, the line between bad mental equipment and bad behavior is often blurred by the fact that bad mental equipment usually causes people to behave badly. This is either because they’re innately more angry and impulsive than they can manage, or because they become bitter about their inability to stop themselves from fucking up, which ups the anger factor even more. So the fact that some fuckups act like Assholes (see Chapter 9) doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve made worse choices than the better-behaved fuckups, or that they have more control over their choices. It just means they struggle more and their behavior may be even harder for them to change or control.
    If you can tolerate the humiliation and helplessness and admit that you’re an out-of-control fuckup, it frees you from expectations you can’t possibly meet, promises you can’t keep, and appearances you can’t maintain; it liberates you from the ensuing cycle of endless failure. It doesn’t free you, of course, from your standards or your determination to be as least fucked-up as possible given your new, self-acknowledged fuckup status.
    As soon as you accept who you are, think hard about the standards you want to live up to and less about looking normal, pleasing authorities, or competing with others. Use those standards to manage your inner fuckup by redoubling your efforts to learn whatever you really care about and manage bad behavior.
    Rely on your own standards for defining hard work, reliability, and self-reliance, and use your gifts to achieve them in your own way. If your career happens to lack prestige or follows an unconventional, restless path, don’t criticize yourself. Respect yourself all the more for having found a way to meet standards using equipment you didn’t choose and given habits that are hard to break.
    Remember, fucking up doesn’t mean getting bad results; it means not doing your best with what you’ve got. As long as you’ve developed values you believe in, and have reason to think you’re doing your best to work at living up to them, you’ll always be a success, even if learning you’ve got a wacky brain is hard to swallow.
Quick Diagnosis
    Here’s what you wish for and can’t have:
    â€¢Â On-demand concentration and focus
    â€¢Â Not acting stupid
    â€¢Â Good results whenever you work hard and deserve them
    â€¢Â Not feeling scared shitless before you can start working
    Here’s what you can aim for and actually achieve:
    â€¢Â Define for yourself what’s necessary to get done
    â€¢Â Find your own ways for doing and delegating what’s