I’m still camping. We have a campsite near the waterfront on a large lake, with easy view of the campground’s boat dock. All week, we’ve been watching people come and go; some more experienced than others. Some in a hurry to get out on the lake; others, in a hurry to get their boats out of the water before a storm sets in.

Among these, one stood out.

This pic looks a bit like Bonnie, my dog and companion, who becomes Captain Camp Dog when we’re camping.

He had an old fishing boat that looked like it had seen better days. He was young, perhaps inexperienced — or, more likely, in too much of a hurry to use good judgment. As he backed his boat and trailer down to the water’s edge, the whole trailer curved off to the side and just about into the boat dock, itself, wedging the boat into lapse of concrete between the boat launch and the dock.

I first noticed him because of the awful screeching sounds his trailer made as he backed up, sounding like metal scraping along the pavement. Sure enough, he must have jolted the boat enough that the boat motor had come down and the blades were scraping the pavement. He got out of the truck and manhandled the boat and trailer enough that the motor ended up in the right position, and he gunned the truck to get the trailer out of its stuck position. He managed to back the boat up to the water and release it to the water, tying it to the dock.

On the way up the launch to park his truck and trailer, I noticed that the metal grating sound wasn’t just the boat motor; one entire tire was shredded to the wheel. Despite that, he dragged the trailer up the hill, not to be seen again for a bit. I don’t know whether he chose to replace the tire with a spare or if he had to park the trailer and drive somewhere to buy a new tire, but it took him a bit to get back to his boat.

When he finally arrived, he untied his boat, pushed off the dock — and couldn’t get the motor started on the boat. He impatiently tried and tried — sputtering and gasping the boat through the no-wake-zone, until he was finally in the main channel of the lake. After that, we didn’t see him again. I missed it when he returned, but I thought about him.

Did he have a string of bad luck? Or were his misfortunes because he failed to prepare and plan?

I think, quite often, when I don’t see success in my weight loss efforts, that I have to go back and analyze what may have been outside of my control, and what was my own lack of planning and judgment. Did I do everything possible to produce the outcome I wanted, or did I just get lazy and blame circumstances?

Did I check that spare tire and have it with me, or did I just fly by the seat of my pants, trusting that I wouldn’t shred a tire at the last minute? Did I check to make sure my boat was in running condition, or did I just assume everything would be okay?

Are my circumstances to blame, or am I?

Personal responsibility, when it comes to weight loss (or anything else), is one of the toughest things to accept. If you’ve done everything within your power to succeed and you still fail, then it’s a matter of accepting that fate and doing the best you can under the circumstances. But if you’ve simply coasted and assumed that your efforts were good enough, then you’ve played a huge part in your own failure.

If you want to succeed, well, then — you have to actually get to where the boat leaves from in order to enjoy the ride.