Brazen Bibliophage

My year of failing continues. Okay, it’s actually been a lifetime of failing. But that’s okay. Really. It’s human — and I’m certain I’m still a human.

Over the past month or so, my failures include not updating this blog (5 weeks!), not getting jobs I apply for, not focusing on tasks at hand (like READING!), not doing things I want or plan to do, and resisting reality.

Some of my ongoing struggles are with letting things be easy and putting my ideas out there. Both of these apply to this blog. Writing is easy for me. Crafting grammatically correct and clear sentences is easy. But that doesn’t mean I do it. Because I discount whether is good enough when it’s easy. And the good enough problem flows into putting ideas into the world. I question whether my ideas are good enough or whether my points are solid — as if there is some arbiter of ideas that can determine this.

On the job front, I get so many rejections. So, so many. Indeed will actually tell you if a company rejected your application. And many companies will send out their form email about the overwhelming response to their posting and how they went with people who more closely matched what they’re looking for. Some companies simply don’t provide a response at all. And then there are the interviews that you fucking nail, but you don’t get the job offer.

What’s an amazing worker like myself to do with all this rejection? Well, keep getting rejected — or keep failing, if you will. Each interaction I have with a potential employer helps me to develop my resume, cover letter, and interview skills. I discover effective ways to talk about past work and jobs. I also realize some things about past jobs that I wasn’t able to recognize at the time, including reasons for leaving jobs and what I’ve learned and how I’ve grown as an employee.

Focusing has become increasingly difficult for me. For a long time, I thought I was immune to the lure of smartphones and apps and social media. I considered my use reasonable. I mean, I can go to the bathroom without my phone. But I didn’t realize how even the small “breaks” I would take to look at my phone or social media were having a huge impact on my ability to focus. After years of “reasonable” usage, my brain is a little bit broken.

Recognizing what’s happened is helping me to undo the damage. I’m diligent about setting time to focus on one task. I still fail occasionally, but I’m failing forward because I’m not totally abandoning the task. Instead, I notice that I’ve taken a “break” and return to the task, trusting myself to devote the full allotted time to the task from that point forward.

Not doing what I want or plan is the area I’ve done the least work on. In the planning arena, I simply don’t plan to do things I know I’ll likely back out of. This usually involves things outside of my apartment, but it also bleeds into things I want to do. These are mostly the things I enjoy, like crafting and painting. And they’re tied into planning because I don’t plan time for them. I convince myself that I’ll have time on my days off, then I end up doing other mostly unnecessary things.

An accomplishment in this area is that I am doing a lot more reading. I plan time for it because I know that it’s integral to my mental and emotional well-being. (Bonus that it helps with focusing.)

Maybe the most insidious form of failing is resisting reality. As Byron Katie says, “When you argue with reality, you lose — but only 100% of the time.” Intellectually, I know that getting angry about the way something is only frustrates me and takes attention away from accomplishing things that are important to me. That doesn’t stop it from happening, but it’s a step in the right direction. I’m failing my way to accepting reality. Each time I resist, it takes less time for me to come to terms with my resistance and move into acceptance.

So, I’m failing a lot. Which sounds really bad, right? Remember, I’ve learned to embrace failure. I’m succeeding at failing. I’m learning to fail and keep going. Every failure is a little success in some way

Failure now means that I’ve learned something. It might not be immediately obvious to me, but it eventually seeps into my brain and creates a new groove.