Not gonna lie. This episode is pulling from a pretty personal place for me.

Not that I think I’m unique. We all face down failure, most of us over and over again. I think about it a lot–whether I’m kidding myself to have hope that things will get better after I’ve failed so much and so often. It can take a lot of energy to deal with failure, especially if you find yourself dealing with repeated failure, or repeated mistakes. It’s easy to get discouraged and to beat up on yourself.

Soviet Sam is, in a lot of ways, the comic book embodiment of self-flagellation. He keeps trying, but when he fails he cuts himself ZERO slack. I identify with that on a pretty deep level.

There are ways out of this, of course. I happen to think one religious way in particular is the most advantageous, but beyond that I do try to remember two things: 1) the times I’ve succeeded, especially when the odds were against me, and 2) what President Reed says here at the end of the strip: that the greater failure–the ONLY failure, really–is in just giving up. I won’t do that.

And you shouldn’t either.

See you on Monday with 780 – Don’t Be a Jerry