Belated Birthday Thoughts: On Being A Failure

March 28, 2016 by Jennifer L. Post 4 Comments

So last week I turned 28, which is pretty cool. Over the weekend Lucas and I hosted a birthday shindig – also the first ever shindig in our new place – and it was a huge success! ^-^ And, thanks to having people over, our house is finally clean and set-up, so I feel like we are finally settled in. I think this has already helped my writing, because I got up early on Saturday and spent some time finishing up the first typo-edit of my wizard story. And on Sunday I even remembered to send it out to my betas!

There’s just something about not feeling like there’s an endless list of things to DO, that makes me feel like sitting down and writing. Hopefully I can keep up this momentum. ^-^

Another thing that my birthday brought about: a lot of thoughts about my goals and how far I’ve gone towards achieving them. I’m going into my third year of blogging and seriously pursuing a writing career. Being published, that’s my big goal.

To be honest, I don’t feel like I’m any closer to reaching that goal than I was in 2014. I keep looking at the big picture and going, “Well, it’s been two years now. Not even a short story published? Yep, you’re a failure.” And, well, that’s true. I can’t argue with the fact that I haven’t even scratched the surface of my goal, despite trying my best and posting hopeful declarations of “Yeah, I’m gonna do it!” every few months… which makes the failure even more painful.

But then I remind myself to look at the smaller scale, to look at the goals I am giving myself every year, or month, or week. There are some of those I’m failing at too, but there are a lot more that I’m reaching. There are even some that I’m blasting straight through, as if they were a box of Thin Mints. My over-arching failure isn’t the only fact around here.

The fact is: I’ve written more in the last two years alone than in the ten before them.
The fact is: I’ve done more editing and polishing in the last few years than I ever have; and my writing is stronger.
The fact is: I am finishing stories and I am sending them out into the world.

And that means I am closer to my goals than I think I am.

As human beings, we are never going to be beyond failing. For myself, this holds doubly true. I know I am going to continue to fail, and fail hard. And, I am going to keep posting about it here; because failing is okay. No seriously, it really is. No matter how hard you hit the ground, as long as you scrape yourself up and keep moving forward you are still achieving something. You are still moving towards who and what you want to be.

Because failure isn’t the end of the story, it’s just a pinch point. ^-^