No, this is not about the ACM ICPC.

I blogged about a feeling of dread a couple of days back.  Well, the dreaded event finally happened and I am, of course, very disappointed, though not surprised.

There are some people I think of as being "natural winners," which is to say that they do well, they win, in everything they attempt.  One of them assured me that he has lost far more than he has won, and that the important thing is to try. And so I try.  The difference is that these people have won big and I have not (or at least I don't believe that I have).

Two parts self-pity and one part envy--how pathetic is that?  

At the crux of this disappointment are my own expectations from myself. There are a few new, non-trivial challenges I've set out to accomplish and I don't feel as if I'm making the sort of headway that I should be making if I expect to accomplish them within this lifetime.  The things I've already been able to do?  They're done, they're over.  There's no resting on laurels.  There's only moving forward.

So, I will get over the disappointment, because that's what moving forward is about.  In scaling your own personal Everest, the last thing you want is to get stuck clambering in the foothills.