You know that line, “It don’t matter if you win by an inch or a mile. Winning’s winning.”? I think it was Dom Toretto who said that. Always kind of resonated with me, but it really slammed home after this one time I was wrestling with some code. It wasn’t for work or anything, just a little personal project I was hammering away at in my spare time. Something I was building for myself, you know, just to see if I could.
So, I’d been at it for days, maybe weeks, on this one particular feature. It just wouldn’t click. I was staring at the screen, changing bits here, tweaking stuff there, and getting absolutely nowhere. Man, it was frustrating. I mean, proper hair-pulling type of frustration. I’d try one thing, nope. Another thing, still busted. I was convinced the whole thing was cursed, or maybe I just wasn’t cut out for this particular piece of the puzzle. My desk was a mess of scribbled notes and empty coffee mugs. I was close to just deleting the whole folder and pretending it never happened. Seriously, that close.
Why all the fuss over a small personal thing, right?
Well, it became a bit of a battle. Me versus this stubborn block of logic. It wasn’t about the project being revolutionary or anything. It was about not letting it beat me. I’d sunk so much time into it, that “quarter mile” of effort, you could say. Quitting felt like admitting defeat over something I knew should work. I’d go to bed thinking about it, wake up, and the first thought would be some new, probably dumb, idea to try.
And then, finally, I spotted it. It was such a stupid little mistake. A typo. One character out of place. An “inch” of an error, if you will. Something I must have scanned over a hundred times and just not seen. My eyes were probably just glazed over by that point. I changed that one tiny thing, hit run, and just held my breath.
Boom. It worked. Just like that. The whole thing lit up, did exactly what it was supposed to do. The relief was incredible. It felt like I’d conquered a mountain, not just fixed a typo. That tiny, insignificant change, that “inch,” made the difference between a pile of junk and a working piece of software. The win felt like a “mile.” All that frustration just washed away, and all that was left was this quiet satisfaction. Winning’s winning, alright.
It really doesn’t matter how you get there, or how close you were to failing, or how small the final step is. When it clicks, when it works, when you finally cross that finish line… that’s all that counts. That feeling is the same. An inch, a mile – doesn’t change the W. It’s a good reminder when you’re stuck in the weeds on something. Just gotta find that inch.
