I’ve opened up this page to write a note for the blog a dozen times or more over the past few weeks. I have a dozen drafts of catch-up letters, thoughts on a year in quarantine, and random pieces of fluff. Honestly, what I’ve been doing is quietly screaming in my head.
It’s not just quarantine. It’s not just seasonal depression. It’s not just the fact that it rained almost the entire month of January so I couldn’t even go for a walk.
It’s lots, and lots, and lots of little things.
A rejection here. A difficult edit there. A struggle with my aging parents. A problem with my teen’s graduation schedule. A change here. A switch to that plan there. A little thing… but the little things add up.
Today was one of those days filled with little things. I have six scenes left to write in a book. I have some client edits to finish. And both my teenagers had tests. One was testing for a scholarship program that would have paid for her engineering degree. The other was testing for a learner’s permit.
Both studied. Both prepared. Both went in and did their best. Both failed.
They made a valiant effort.
The one testing for engineering took too long to finish the test. This is normal. She tests slowly, and has accommodations in school to allow for that. But she won’t have that in the real world. The program doesn’t need to allow for people with disabilities, so they don’t. Eldest is fine with this. Her friend passed and got in. Eldest has other options, she has scholarships for her GPA and she’s planning on taking a gap year to do a mission for church (or at least take a year off of school) and the program wouldn’t commit to deferment.
In this case failure makes the best course of action easier to pick. It’s failure, but it’s a brave, useful failure.
The one testing for her learner’s permit went in a second time. She’s studied, but she gets stressed when tested and the DMV was distracting and busy and a stressful place. Last time she only completed twenty questions before she missed too many to pass. There are thirty total and she got to thirty this time. In the parking lot afterwards she wrote down all the questions she remembered getting wrong. It’s failure, but it’s a learning, good failure.
It’s easy to get caught in the binary of win/lose.
You passed or you failed.
You got the job or you didn’t.
You sold the book or you didn’t.
But that’s not actually how it works, is it? You don’t need to quit because you failed at something.
The kid who failed the learner’s permit test will go back next week and try again. The kid who didn’t get into one engineering program will get into another. The book I threw in the virtual trash can last week will get a new life as another plot line.
If it helps at all…. think of every attempt to do something as a test draft. If it didn’t turn out exactly the way you wanted, that’s fine. You can try again later.
If you learned something from it and walked away… it’s not failure. You found a different way. A better way. Your way.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed take a moment to sit there, to mourn what you wanted, to catalog what you learned… but then stand back up. Try again. Try something new. Try a new way. Try… just try. And then try again.
Rejection hurts and failure is painful, but you are brave enough to try again.
And so am I.