Maybe it was bound to happen.

I had the feeling that something was gonna screw up during Outdoor itself, no matter how well (or how badly) I was shooting during training. And screw up it did, 60% of all my shots from 50m got blown off course, and they all landed off-centre, on the right. Even if I aimed off-centre, they'd still get blown off-course.

30m score was semi-wasted. 235. I've only started achieving 230+ recently after I decided that the bloody side stabilisers were, to quote Zhantao: "killing me more than helping me", and removed them. But it's still nowhere near the 272 that I've managed to achieve with my old jazz arrows.

Maybe I should've just stuck with using my main stabiliser all along. Maybe I shouldn't have listened when *he* suggested I put on the whole set.

That horrible gnawing feeling I've had all this time. My standard isn't good enough to win anything in C-class. I've known it for a long time, and all the training I've been doing hasn't helped. I hope I haven't reached the height of my ability yet. I need to be able to push this further.

NTU Open? Not bloody likely I'm gonna be able to win anything there. Maybe AAS this year was a fluke. Maybe I won something only because there were so many categories and that meant that with more categories open, there was less competition in the Open Category.

So I was ranked 4th. So what? There were all of *TEN* competitors in Open Cat. What good is fourth out of ten?

What good is it when there were only 5 competitors in IVP and I ended up fourth place again? I didn't win anything. There's nothing to show for fourth place, and no one cares. All that matters is that you have something to show for it.

I've always believed that the worst place to be is fourth; it's so close yet so far, the most wasted chance of all. And here I am. I told a few people jokingly that I'd cry if I didn't win something for Outdoor. I didn't believe I'd do it, but yesterday I did. Cry, that is. No one noticed, I think, and that's good.

Does it really count if you have the passion for it?

Does passion and love for it all count even if you can't win anything?

What does passion matter if you have nothing to show for it?

If you never have anything to show for the effort, how much longer can passion keep you going?

"You're a good archer."

Maybe I'll believe it when I see it.