Freedom to fail

Why have I come back?

Well let’s not put the cart before the horse

Why did I shut down the blog in the first place?

Which took me awhile to fully understand myself

Short answer?

Because I hate failing

And I was failing – or felt I was

I lacked the courage and intestinal fortitude to go on failing

So I flipped the switch to private and didn’t come back – for two years.

But you know what – it’s damned difficult to stop paying for a WordPress blog – I know I tried to cancel my subscription a few times without result and the fact that I couldn’t cancel and kept paying for it began to irk me

A lot

So now the question

Why have I reopened the blog?

Apart from the fact that if I’m not using it and have to pay for it well…

But there is a bigger answer and a deeper compulsion

I have realised that if I walk away from writing because I fear failure

Or rather if I fail to publish my writing

Because I fear failure

Then I have no future with writing

And the thing is – I desperately want a future with writing

Seth Godins podcast on the matter was an “aha” moment

To get better at anything we have to fail

Learning to walk involves a series of failures – if as toddlers we had been so harsh as to say “you look like an idiot – stop failing”

We would never walk

Learning anything – requires a series of failures

So I saw that in order to write

I had to brave enough to fail

Spectacularly

Embarrassingly

And on a daily basis if necessary

It may not even look like failure to an observer

But it doesn’t matter how your failure looks to someone else – it only matters how it feels inside

And with writing – it doesn’t matter what you write about (and this blog will continue to be a compilation of just whatever is on my mind each day)

But rather that you simply write

And do so fearlessly and truthfully and continue

That’s key

The continuing bit

So I continue

10 thoughts on “Freedom to fail

  1. Welcome back. I also have returned from an online dry spell, writing in the background and feeling as though it was not quite good enough to publish but still writing it anyway.
    If you are as stubborn as me then don’t consider it failing it just takes a new angle.

    • Thanks Lawrence – I think it is a universal condition and I’m so happy to be back writing and reading in blog land that I have made a promise to myself to try not to get in that head space again.

  2. Haha, interestingly enough, I find this post a week after I made my blog private. I’m still in the process of collecting the strength to get up, walk and fall again so it’ll be a while before I come back, but yeah, till then, I’ll be reading.
    😊😊😊

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