No! This is not about football, the Patriots, or being 17-0 after yet another win this evening. The is about a quest to be perfect, and how one of the easiest things to do is slip up on such a path.

Perfection is more than a goal, it's a journey that needs constant attention and dedication to the cause, or, just like that, it's gone. One step that wasn't planned, one forgotten task, one missed conversation, one passed ball and all that hard work, no matter how much time it represented no longer can be classified as 'perfect.'

There is a universal understanding that everyone loses sometimes and that eventually the law of averages catches up with us.

For me it was 8 years and 8 months of perfection. 100% without a hint of negativity thrown my way. And then, just like that, those one hundred and four months were for not, as the tide rushed in and knocked me off my feet and onto the harsh sands of mediocrity. The waters retreated, the sand softens in the warming sunlight of the new day, but the damage is done. Nothing can reverse the slip mishap, and now the journey begins anew -- with an * or a remark, or a caveat attached.

I'm dissappointed in myself because this pebble that got in my way could have been avoided and the allusive perfection could still be mine...