I take my responsibility very seriously. My youth was spent where there were many dangers, but all the dangers were survivable, if you paid attention to the tides, the salmon runs, and various things that inattention to could kill you. By the time I was 30 half my graduating class were dead. So I understood that if something happened to me it was my fault. There are no excuses, because nothing unbreaks your leg when you just fall off a cliff. Why would anybody fall off a cliff? They did something stupid, like stand too close to the edge when a rock broke loose they were standing on, or something like that. There may be reasons, even good reasons for things to happen, but nothing excuses irresponsibility, and it's worst of all when someone else gets hurt because you put them in harm's way.

Because if it happens to me it's my fault, the cause of injury is pilot error in every case where I have been injured. The problems with my truck are always the loose nut behind the wheel. If I'm going to be doing this or that thing, I'm taking responsibility for how that thing turns out, and if I get hurt I stupidly took responsibility I was unprepared to assume. I don't shy away from such facts, because if I do, I won't learn fully the lesson I can learn from making the mistake. I don't much like getting hurt, so I do like to learn as fully as I can the lessons from making mistakes that get me hurt. If I was smarter, I'd have been hurt a lot less than I have been, and that's just the fact.

Merry Christmas!