"failure"
i've been hung up on mistakes this past week, see. my mind defaulted those to "failure," because it was one after the other. i found myself despondent after trying and still "failing." i'm putting all versions of this word in quotes in the way i am using it as a means to divorce it from, well, it not being such a bad thing after all. making the scary monster in the closet less foreboding.
and so, for semantic purposes:
- to fail is to be unsuccessful, to fall short.
- to "fail" is to call into question, "what am i doing and why isn't being done right? why do i continue to let myself and others down?"
does that make sense?
as i write this, i'm seeing that i'm concerned with the whole, and not the parts. the parts are the mistakes. something i'm great at is taking things apart to understand them. what better way to apply that skill than to my relationship to "failure" and failure?
making a mistake amongst myself makes my face hot. making a mistake in front of an audience turns my blood into acid. i've experienced both in droves, a corrosive cloudburst that leaves a sour aftertaste; umami but not fun.
a friend of mine said a friend of his had "failure logs," and i thought that was intriguing. i thought i'd give it a shot, as to re/contextualize "failure" as i know it. and there they are now, the mistakes i can recall off the top of my head, laid out in front of me.
these mistakes are quite innocuous now: i misread the room in a handful of conversations, i got confused in the bustle of the weekend grocery store crowd and grabbed the wrong shopping cart, i made more errors at work than not, i applied unfair judgement and assumed too much.
some are bigger than others. a bundle of grapes, some more ripe and full, some pea-sized and modest. but nonetheless, smaller than i made them out to be.
it's easy to focus on the error over the success. lana del rey mulled over this, similarly: "my life, it comprises of losses and wins and fails and falls." this line has stuck with me, more than ever since i've gotten older. there seems to be more at stake with age. i still struggle with this notion in that it's habitual to lean into lamenting over the house of cards teetering over, instead of the opportunity of rebuilding presenting itself once more.
wasn't that half the fun anyways, the jenga tower or crayola marker sword giving way to gravity? the other half is try try trying again. i wasn't sad at failing or "failing." i instead thought, "hmm, i could do this differently, then it'll stay up longer." again and again, going through this problem-solving that was more ambitious than a folly, because i saw a better version, always, ahead.
that's what i thought of today, too. i'm smarter than i let on. i have abilities i've honed through repetition and troubleshooting. i did not get this "good" at mario kart in one go, nor did i figure out how to shade a drawing in the way i do with pure guesswork. there were many times where i restarted consoles and tossed drafted in the waste bin. a lot of times, i gave up, frankly, and didn't touch these things out of imposed dejection. too many "fails."
but i'd be itching inside to try again, even if i convinced myself it'd be the same outcome anyways. before i knew it, "fails" became fails. surprise: if you fall (or fail, rather), get back up.
i confided in someone dear, "is it okay to make so many mistakes at once?"
he told me, "it's okay. it's a universal experience. you're supposed to. that's how you grow. that's how you've grown. embarrassment is a sign you recognized a learning point. you gotta pull the lesson from it and move on so it doesn't eat away at you."
what was it bob ross said? "we don't make mistakes; we have happy accidents"?
yeah, i don't "fail." i fail, and that's great.