Three things I've learned the hard way.

Thanks to Lonnie Bruner for tagging me on this one. Of course, he did that back in February, and here we are nearly to the Ides of March and I'm finally catching up. Learning things the hard way is often the only way to learn some lessons, because they simply don't sink in properly until the time for recovery is past.

1. Sit your ass in the chair and just write. Seriously. You will not finish your dissertation/novel/autobiography as long as you continue to do "research." You simply can't know it all, and besides, you will never end up going where you think you were going in the beginning. Only the writing will tell. It took me seven years to figure that out.

2. You are only young once. Apparently as you age, your bones aren't as resilient and things like tendons, muscles, and joints fail with disappointing ease. While I've learned this lesson quite often over the past few years, it's a teaching I have mostly ignored as far as basketball is concerned. So maybe you could say I haven't learned it the hard way yet, with the hard way meaning a broken leg or jaw. Maybe. I have broken my ankle, though. And then sprained it severely a few months later. The sprain was worse.

3. Don't do crack; it's a ghetto drug. Um, OK, that was a lesson from Bob Roberts. Never mind.

3. You should never, ever try to apply rational arguments to middle-school disputes. In middle-school, you only look like a fool trying to explain or analyze situations. As Homer Simpson argues, the "law of the playground" rules the day, and fists speak louder than words. However, you can still talk your way out of a fight if you claim that "My mother told me never to throw the first punch. Just the last one."