You drive toward the peak of your career and a wedge jams sideways at your shin. Mars, the ram that drives straight at things, drags at a wrenched angle against the meridian, the visible heading your work climbs toward. Drive and the public peak cut across each other, and the grinding throws a spark. The push fires where it least fits, and what you put before the crowd lurches forward in fits, snagged on resistance you never picked. From that constant scrape you learn to aim the heat instead of spending it on the nearest wall. The strength does not arrive free here. It is tempered blow on blow against a frame that pushes back, until the drive lands clean and feeds the work rather than the fight.