You know, in the movies, it's all so simple.

Scene: The nerdy, severely inconfident guy is at a crossroads in his life. You know the guy I'm talking about... thick glasses, hair parted on the side and combed over, wearing an old AC-DC T-shirt and shorts that should have stayed in 1986. This guy -- let's call him Craig -- has to make a move. The rest of the world has passed Craig by, and he's about to miss out on some opportunity if he doesn't raise up and seize the day.

Craig, obviously, needs a boost of confidence. What does Craig do? Why, it's simple. He takes off his glasses, puts some gel in his hair and comes it back, and goes out and buys a dashing vest-pants ensemble to wear. Poof! Suddenly Craig fixes all the problems in his life. Hell, it even fixed his eyesight... he's not wearing glasses anymore, and I didn't see him putting in contacts.

Now, obviously, that's not going to work. I don't honestly believe a new suit of clothes and some AquaNet will change the way one thinks. The past couple of weeks have been an interesting odyssey for me; the battle between good and evil has been raging in my head for a while. [See, I (finally) watched Lord of the Rings last night, so things are kind of coming to me in Middle Earth metaphors right now.] It's just... it's a funny balance. I'm all about full honesty in all areas of my life. I mean, if I wasn't, would I be telling the whole world that there's good and evil forces IN MY HEAD? But a piece of advice I received today was: If you find yourself not being confident, you have to at least fake it for a little while until you feel comfortable with it, and then you'll find you ARE confident. I don't know... I guess I'll give it a shot tonight and we'll see where things go. But I'm a lot like Craig... I need to make a move. I refuse to revert to my previous state of self-esteemless loserdom.

All right, so to be totally honest, I'm not usually this conflicted, nor this wiling to bore you with it. But this race tonight has still got me on edge, so my brain's kind of worn out right now, and when it's worn out, I worry about things best left alone. I've got to jet home after the race and change out of my suit, so I'll poke in here and post how we did, since I know people come to my blog every 15 minutes to see if I've updated it yet. (No, seriously, if you care... I should post the results sometime around 10:00 pm tonight.)

All right. Regardless of my day-to-day state, by the way, I'm still tremendously excited about the upcoming dinner. At this point, though, time to take a shower.