I’m an Expert Failure

I’m an expert failure.

There’s no way around it.  I’ve failed at so many things that it’s almost depressing.

Maybe you’re like me and you just feel like you can’t ever quite seem to get over the hump.  Success is always just right within arms reach but it’s just a bit too far off, or too fuzzy to make out.

Maybe you’re even more like me and success isn’t even around the corner.  You’ve failed so hard that you aren’t even sure which way is up anymore.  Success isn’t even on the horizon.  You’d just be thrilled with survival.

Everybody likes to talk about how Thomas Edison invented some katrillion ways to not make a light bulb and then they like to tell us that success is for the people that didn’t give up.  I really want to believe them but sometimes I’m just not feeling it.

I know a lot about failure though.  I could seriously get tenure at a major university if they needed a professor of failure.  I know how to fail at blogging, business, ministry, dating, marriage, parenting,  divorce, divorced parenting, divorced dating… Shoot I even know how to fail at little stuff like making mac ‘n cheeze. (You may not have thought that was possible but I am here to tell you that it is.)

I’ve come to believe though, that everybody fails just as often, and just as hard as I do.  It’s just only us brave folks that admit how often we fail.  Too many people out there are trying to hide their failures and to be honest, I’ve tried to hide mine too but it’s just way too much work.  My goal for tomorrow is to fail abysmally at hiding my failures.  I’m going to be honest and maybe, just maybe, if I start failing at hiding my failures I can start failing at failing.

Take your time….

… And now you’ve got it.

Who’s down to join me.  Lets start failing on purpose because Edison was right.  Failure is just knowledge of how not to do something.  The more knowledge we gain about failure the closer we come to finding the nuggets of non-failure.

What are you missing when you are stressing

One of my favorite movies growing up was an indie film called Extreme Days.  It’s a corny Christian attempt at the road trip comedy genre with some extreme sports scenes scattered throughout to keep it interesting.

I loved it.  It was quotable, it was clean, and I had a huge crush on Jessie (Cassidy Rae).

I remember playing spoons with friends who hadn’t seen the movie and then showing them the spoons scene.  It was awesome.  My friends and I still quote Extreme Days almost 15 years later.

One of the best lines in the movie is a narration by Will.  As you watch their convertible Joyota drive through the mountains after a rainstorm that has left them all drenched and freezing he says this:

“We had some random things happen to us; some good, some bad, some u can’t explain, some u don’t want to, but one thing we did learn for sure…when God throws a curveball…don’t duck…u just might miss something.”

In the past two weeks I’ve had more curveballs than I know what to do with.  My Dad got an awesome promotion that is taking him to Texas which means the timeline for me to find my own place just shrunk drastically.

I thought I found a house, and got pretty stoked, only to get outbid.

My daughter, who is only 4 1/2 had to get a root canal on the day of her first ballet recital two weeks before her new dental coverage kicks in.

And that’s just been the big stuff.  It’s been crazy!

I’m doing a wedding this weekend and traveling to speak at a church in Ajo next weekend.  My schedule is filling up fast and my stress level is following suite.

All weekend I’ve been stressing out about houses and schedules and finances and my gut instinct has been to binge watch How I met your Mother on Netflix.

I sat down this morning to face the dreaded blank page, having not written anything in two weeks and realized that I’ve been ducking curveballs all weekend.

Curveballs are scary.  They start out coming right at your head and the only thing you can think is “BAIL OUT!!!!”   I tend to retreat into myself and pretend like the “stuff” that is happening, isn’t.  I binge watch netflix or zone out playing spider solitaire all in an effort to “decompress” but as soon as the episode is over or I realize that there are no longer any productive moves which means the ipad has bested me again… the stress comes back.

When you duck a curveball, that doesn’t stop you from having to stand in the box and get ready for the next pitch and to follow the metaphor all the way through, if you duck too many curveballs, chances are you strike out.

My encouragement to you, and challenge to myself, this week is to stand in there.  Duck your shoulder, pause for a split second to give that curveball time to dive into the zone and then swing for the fence and celebrate as the old time announcer screams “It’s got the distance… And YOU…. CAN…. KISS….. IT….. GOODBYE!!!!!!!!!!”

 

Photo by Carl Jones