{"id":842,"date":"2016-06-28T20:31:52","date_gmt":"2016-06-29T03:31:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/?p=842"},"modified":"2016-06-28T20:31:52","modified_gmt":"2016-06-29T03:31:52","slug":"failure-part-3293409","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/2016\/06\/failure-part-3293409\/","title":{"rendered":"Failure, part 3293409"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Many of you know that I have spent some time thinking about failure, how failure is defined, what it means, and so on and so forth. <\/p>\n<p><a data-flickr-embed=\"true\"  href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/jillbertini\/27357603493\/in\/dateposted-public\/\" title=\"agave\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/c6.staticflickr.com\/8\/7224\/27357603493_4aab339820.jpg\" width=\"374\" height=\"500\" alt=\"agave\"><\/a><script async src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Recently, as in possibly three weeks ago, I was feeling like an UTTER failure. You know, the kind where you think you will NEVER do anything, no one likes you, why are you even BOTHERING? Yeah, that kind. I wondered why my friends liked me, why my employer hadn\u2019t fired me, and if anyone would ever want to buy anything I wrote. I was like: <i>hand to forehead<\/i> WOE.<\/p>\n<p>I rode it out. I talked to people. I checked reality. An acquaintance reminded me this was chemicals swishing around in my body. Eventually the storm passed, I dragged my weary soul back to dry land and took stock. I was fine. Nothing had changed, really, only my perception.<\/p>\n<p>When I feel like that, in the morass of it all, I still try to keep my agreements with myself. It helps me to not spiral further down. And in the midst of that storm, I applied for a writer\u2019s workshop that is held in the fall. I thought I was unworthy. I wouldn\u2019t get in. But I would bother, and I would let them decide, before I rejected myself.<\/p>\n<p>Last week my friend Nicole recommended the podcast <a href=\u201chttp:\/\/www.elizabethgilbert.com\/magic-lessons\/\u201c>Magic Lessons<\/a>, which is by Elizabeth Gilbert (of <i>Eat, Pray, Love<\/i> fame). I was a little skeptical, since I wasn\u2019t a fan of the book. But I\u2019ve heard at least one of her TED talks, and I trust Nicole. The first episode was an interview with someone that Gilbert was coaching. It resonated for me. I had downloaded the last one, and none in between. The last was an interview with Brene Brown, who writes amazing stuff around vulnerability. Gilbert talked about people who had leapt and the net didn\u2019t appear. Brown said, \u201cWhat\u2019s worth doing, <strong>even if I fail<\/strong>?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat do you love doing so much the word \u201cfailure\u201d doesn\u2019t have any meaning?\u201d Gilbert asked. They go on to talk about inspiration and what it owes you, about being present to the process of creation and not focused on the outcomes.<\/p>\n<p>I was starting to despair about moving to the next level with my writing. Saturday I came home from hanging out with some writer heroes of mine. I felt so encouraged just from those conversations. I checked my email and I found an acceptance to a writer\u2019s workshop on the east coast. I was so stunned I made my girlfriend read it out loud. After so many rejections, it just seemed \u2026 so easy. <\/p>\n<p>But when I stop and think about it more, I have been steadily working on improving my writing, however slow my pace might be. Most of our effort is like the part of the iceberg that\u2019s under water. We only see the tiny fraction that sticks above it. And the truth is, most successes are built on many, many failures. There has to be effort and feedback and recalibration. There has to be support and encouragement. And in the process of applying for writing workshops, I have continued to make the effort.<\/p>\n<p>So I\u2019m thinking about my relationship to failure, to my ideas around failure, and the position I hold with regard to it. What would it mean if I take the idea of failure off the table? This is going to be a huge challenge for me. As I told my friend Daryl on Saturday, I\u2019m horribly extrinsically driven. I like pleasing other people. And deadlines. Daryl suggested knowing these things could help me hack my brain into producing. So I\u2019m going to consider that. There is no one right way to do anything. It\u2019s the <strong>doing<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>So I am going to keep plodding. And plotting.<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_pop\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/button100x23.png\" style=\"border:0px; width:100; height: 23; \" alt=\"Share Button\" \/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Linkedin\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Reddit\",\"Print\");var hupso_icon_type = \"labels\";var hupso_background=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url=\"\";var hupso_title=\"Failure%2C%20part%203293409\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Many of you know that I have spent some time thinking about failure, how failure is defined, what it means, and so on and so forth. Recently, as in possibly three weeks ago, I was feeling like an UTTER failure. You know, the kind where you think you will NEVER do anything, no one likes [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_pop\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/button100x23.png\" style=\"border:0px; width:100; height: 23; \" alt=\"Share Button\" \/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Linkedin\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Reddit\",\"Print\");var hupso_icon_type = \"labels\";var hupso_background=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url=\"\";var hupso_title=\"Failure%2C%20part%203293409\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[163,105],"class_list":["post-842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-slowbloom","tag-creativity","tag-failure"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=842"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":845,"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842\/revisions\/845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}