Friday fails
Oh, hi friends!
Failure is romantic.
Fail again, fail better, they say.
When’s the last time you failed?
You can’t achieve anything unless you fail first.
And on and on.
The ones who like to talk about failure the most are smiling, always smiling. Because they’ve found success, you see! They have crawled through the tunnel and are giving you the wink-wink, I’ve been there.
It’s not as romantic to illuminate your daily failures. Few people do. This was rejected, that was denied, “no thanks,” “not for me,” “we’re going in a different direction.” Who wants to hear about that?
When you’re living in those micro-moments of failure, hindsight disappears. These rejections don’t look like Failure En Route to Something Amazing!!! They look like Failure En Route to More Failure Forever and Ever and Ever and—
That’s why I think it’s important to document failures as they happen in real time. That’s how you bounce back faster and absorb the reason for why things shake out as they do.
And actually, I don’t really know how to end this. Is that a failure? HAVE I FAILED YOU?! Perhaps. But I’m glad it’s here, documented, for myself and for all the world* to see.
*why yes, my newsletter subscriber base constitutes my “world.”
Oh, so, you don't listen to young Tony Robbins on Spotify? That's OK. I'll just give you this quote from An Extraordinary Psychology Gives You the Edge:
"There's excitement in creation. There's not a lot of excitement in maintenance.”
Bits & Baubles
TIME is looking for a News Editor for time.com, fortune.com, and money.com! (h/t Sarah Begley)
I love this Runner’s World story about the National Senior Games.
How to start a podcast! Will you?
‘‘I reckon you don’t write to please other people,’’ she said, slowly and deliberately. ‘‘That’s what your integrity is.’’ This profile of Claire Messud is wonderful, with a wind-up to a glorious ending.
My Macbook trackpad has been sluggish, which causes a white-hot rage to pour from my fingertips and manifest in everything I write. Or something. Then I remembered I have a wireless keyboard and mouse—props bought for my play "Strangers in the Night" last year. And now let me just say...I can’t believe I’ve spent four years working without a mouse. What was I thinking?! Suddenly, my digital life is moving 10x faster than normal. So that's my favorite cheap purchase of the year/my lifetime. You're welcome.
Thank you for reading.
Love, Kara