Writing Opportunity #15 – Failure, Friend or Enemy

So I’m in Portland tonight. I already had hot tub time and chatted with my lovely hosts. I ate delicious Cuban food because I haven’t had fried platanos since forever — scratch that, I actually ate them in my Healthy Choice protein bowl a few days ago.

Anyway, these solo trips have reasons, but the biggest one is to write. Sometimes that means writing badly because the “experts” say it’s better to write badly than to not write at all. I don’t know if I like this offering. This piece may seem like I’m having a mental breakdown, but rest assured, I’m always like this. I like to dabble with and overanalyze failure. I dissect it. This sounds like a good thing, right? It’s good to see what went wrong and persist and move on, but when I work too closely with failure, it sometimes seeps in too deep. And then I have to machete it and clean up the mess.

Like I said, I’m in Portland tonight. It’s rubbing off on me. It could also be listening to Bleachers “I Wanna Get Better.”

---

Writing Opportunity #15: Failing beautifully. Failing in the most disgusting way ever. 250 words.

Falling on the sidewalk and skinning your knee and ripping your dress because you were checking the status of an Amazon shipment.

Annoyingly injecting yourself into conversation when the social environment and all creatures involved are focused on a tragic disaster.

Not writing everyday because the kids, you didn’t feel like it, writer’s block, there was no time, you just got a few rejections, it’s not quiet enough, it’s too quiet, all the clutter, you have a headache.

Tweaking a project for the hundredth time and the solution seems no closer with money, risk, and support draining down the manhole of days you will never get back.

When compulsions and obsessions scream loud and trap you into patterns that make no sense.

Exerting so much mind energy and emotional output and physical stamina that you start believing mathematics is made up, everyone is gaslighting you, and your body will fall to pieces with just your head left to bob down the street.

Failure can lead to a neat scar that looks like a daisy, a change in your life story where you meet your soulmate, surrender that allows you to be molded a tinge more into your eternal self. Failure wants to see if you can beat back the brush and make it to the other side.

Failure can lead to pity, a breeding ground for sorrow and low self-worth, an addiction to everything that separates the continuum of heart, mind, soul, strength. Failure wants to decapitate and maim.

Failing is never just failing; it’s a choice of “what’s next?”