If you want to do something do it wrong first
I read today about the idea of the failure résumé, something I instantly resonated with. I’ve been fascinated byfailure for years. I’ve often found that people present a tidy narrative of their accomplishments to the world. In general people are really bad at talking about their own failures without putting a spin on it. Social media exacerbates this, showing only the highlights of a person’s life.
What I find much more interesting is all of the things that they tried that either didn’t work for them or didn’t work out. ie what did they do that failed? This is tangentially related to framing something as an experiment There’s an interesting podcast called Podcast/How to Fail semi-related to this (though it ends up being kind of tidy-narrative based).
It can be so easy to slip into self-loathing at the first hint of failure. Even retrospectively observing our failures, expecially when at a low point, can feel like a leaden balloon.
the first step to surviving failure is to stop seeing it as a dead-end and start seeing it as scaffolding
So what could I put on my failure résumé?
I remember talking to Pelin Akman about improv and how I didn’t fully realize it at the time but I was actually teaching myself how to fail
At this point I’ve failed at more things than most people have started. It’s a part of being curious!