Warren Ellis, in his newsletter this week, quoted Benjamin Percy (without providing a source):

It's always a shit-stain of a moment when I first hear no. I usually end up listening to John Coltrane in the dark while sucking down a bottle of bourbon and feeling sorry for myself. But then something happens. I somehow go from fuck me to fuck you in my attitude. I've never been the most talented guy in the room, but I'm usually the most stubborn. And that's what's helped me recognize the turn.

Whenever you encounter wreckage, think about the turn. It's waiting up ahead, even if you don't recognize it yet.

— Benjamin Percy

I remember the "no wait, fuck you!" feeling, but I haven't felt it in a long time. I've had a bad habit of internalizing failures or setbacks passively. "Well, fuck me I guess!" In my better moments lately, I've been able to conjure some of that fight. It's not necessarily best to position yourself oppositionally, or at least that's what I've told myself for a long time. I can remember times that having an internal enemy — or a counterexample, someone doing the opposite of what I wanted — was able to ground my approach.

At the very least, so long as you're sure you aren't the villain in a given situation, it's no use directing your negativity toward yourself. I've been watching kaizo Mario speedrunners lately, and GrandPOOBear explained in this video with Tim Rogers that you blame the controller, you blame the kaizo blocks, you blame the game. You don't blame yourself for fucking up. You might know you fucked up, but giving in to that self-demolishing mode isn't going to help you overcome the challenge. Make the failure your enemy, not yourself.

Who is my counterexample now? Well, ha ha, the first person who comes to mind is me. Or at least the me I've been feeding and permitting to take center stage. But that's not all there is to me. This passive, beaten-down, waiting-for-doomsday sadsack isn't all there is to me.

Let's look for the turn.

Or, as KISS says, in their way:

You got to treat yourself like number one
Do you need to be reminded (need to be reminded)
It doesn't matter what you do or say
Just forget the things that you've been told
We can't do it any other way
Everybody's got to rock n roll, yay

If you don't feel good every way you could
Don't sit there broken hearted (sit there broken hearted)
Call all your friends in the neighborhood
And get the party started (get the party started)