Mumbling about: failing to fail (ft. my new silly little challenge)

Tried to write about my angsty relationship with failure, ended up sending myself on a quest.

John Henry Fuseli - The Nightmare

I never fail to think about failure.

Last week I said failure is inevitable, and it is, but its inevitability sits like Fuseli’s Nightmare on my chest, a pressure, a weight to bear.

I have been failing less these past few days. I have tried to reframe my writing as a serious endeavour and so I have not failed to write. 

Or perhaps I have been failing more. A migraine - is that a failure of health? I failed, then, on Monday. The last few weeks I have failed to take a shift at the charity I volunteer for. I have been focussing on not failing at other things, at work, at my health, at my mental wellbeing, at reading, at my relationship. But always there’s failure.

Failure is a kind of master thread weaved into the tapestry of each day, a stitch you cannot drop. What did I fail at today? What did I fail to do, fail to say, fail to achieve? What did I not seize? What thread did I not grasp?

Let’s re-dye the thread then. It is a dangerous red, livid and live. Let’s dye it white, maybe, or blue, something calming. Or let’s dye it brown. Let’s make it ordinary.

Because if I haven’t failed today then I haven’t tried, and if I haven’t tried then I haven’t lived. I cannot separate the thread of failure from the weave. It cannot be unravelled, unpicked. To try, you may as well let the Fates take their shears to the whole thing.

So where am I going with this? I didn’t know when I first started writing, other than the desire to muse about how failure is living - one cannot exist without the other.

And then I thought, instead of just writing about it, and hesitantly dipping my toe in the water, why don’t I actually live it? Why don’t I actually try? Why don’t I dive in headfirst?

I have often been too scared to live. There are consequences to living, pitfalls and risks but also terrifying opportunities. I do not like to leave my comfort zone, but the fact is I’ve done it often recently. It’s scared me, every single time, but it has always been for the better - changing jobs, starting therapist training, starting this newsletter. Yet when it’s over, I breathe a sigh of relief and retreat into the known, waiting for the next unknown to loom on the horizon. Yet so much of life is unknowable. So much is tangled and unpredictable. 

It’s a challenge, then. A quest, if you will. After discussing how perfectionism can affect so many aspects of our lives, I’m going to look at how it manifests in my life, and then I’m going to do more than simply acknowledge it - I’m going to dare to fail.

And then I’m going to write about it for the benefit of both you and me! I’ll challenge perfectionism head-on and take a brush with failure in everything from my writing to socialising to work, and I’ll tell you what I learn.

If you think someone might benefit from my posts on perfectionism, please share my newsletter with them. I rely on all of you to spread the word far better than I can when faced with inhospitable social media algorithms.

And then tell me, what did you fail magnificently at this week, this year, this life? How have you lived? Own it.