Try Again, Fail Again, Fail Better
My previous attempts in making myself open and my project open has been a success, but I haven’t been able to move further. As the days go by I feel as if I’ve just stopped in my steps and currently I’m just facing a huge wall in front of me. But I don’t know what this wall is, and sometimes I really don’t want to know.
I always thought that I faced the challenge of time. Sometimes I couldn’t really find the time to overcome either the time difference I had with the other people around the world or I was more focused on passing my classes rather than doing well in them. But then after my recent attempt on grabbing the Asian world as a focus, I realized that it wasn’t really the lack of time I had, it was just from the lack of confidence. I’ve said that I’ve tried and I’ve failed, but in a better way and learned that things would turn out to be better. But it just feels as if I’m being told not to do things another way, since I have this gut splitting feeling that I would fail again.
Yes indeed Samuel Beckett used to say “Try Again, Fail Again, and Fail Better”, but then Homer Simpson would always say that “Failure always comes from trying”. To tell you the truth I respect both of these people, and it may sound like a joke. But I am serious about the fact that we have a lot to learn from Homer Simpson. He would also be a great man to talk with when it comes to racist and stereotypes, but unfortunately he only exists in an electronic box.
So I guess I can say that I’m stuck with the fact that I haven’t moved on (from just writing), but I guess I just need more time to think to myself, “Is this what you really want?”.
Photo Credit to hometownzero and duncan
March 12th, 2008 at 9:07 am
(Grammar and writing stuff first:)
1. “My previous attempts in making myself open and my project open has been a success” — this is a subject verb agreement error. It’s common when the sub and verb are separated by a prepositional or other phrase. It’s a pattern in your writing, and you should DECIDE RIGHT NOW to recognize that and learn to self-correct. How solve the problem? Mentally remove the words after the subject and say the sentence: “My previous attempts….has been a success.” See how bad it sounds now? Rule: SUBJECTS ARE NEVER PART OF A PHRASE THAT BEGINS WITH A PREPOSITION.
2. “But it just feels as if I’m being told not to do things another way, since I have this gut splitting feeling that I would fail again.” — This is unclear because the “teller” is not identified. Do you mean me? Yourself? If you state the subject (active instead of passive voice), the confusion usually disappears.
Now about your ideas:
After a few weeks of writing about education, I felt stuck too. I felt like I was writing the same stuff everybody else was, and adding nothing new. I didn’t like it. I knew I was interested in education and the historical possibilities for revolutionizing it with new technologies, but didn’t just want to write about the tools.
So I had to find an original angle. And I had to write my refusal to be unoriginal in this post, and set my own original goal there. (Please click on that link and read it.)
Notice that I didn’t just throw away my project (Beyond School IS a project. It’s just real-world, never-ending, as I try new stuff and fail and succeed and think out loud about it all. And share ideas of new things I want to try to do. And more.).
Instead, I just let it organically grow and bend as it needed to for me to stay interested.
So you can obviously take this racism idea in a million original directions. It can be:
–reflective writing
–fiction or personal narrative writing
–satire writing
–historical writing (the history of racism is an interesting one)
–radio shows whenever you realize that they’re no harder than making a phone call, if you find the right people
–videos (re-mixes of historical or youtube footage into your own iMovie could be interesting and powerful)
–video interviews could be interesting too
–a mix of any or all of the above.
This is called learning from failure. All failure seems to be teaching you right now is to be open to changing your idea, to not lock it into a cage when it wants to move and grow.
As long as you keep writing, at a minimum, toward finding passion and interesting ideas again, I’m fine with that.
Be sure to communicate with me. Another way to turn failure into success is to talk through it with people who can listen.
March 13th, 2008 at 8:16 am
I can relate to your feelings about your project. I am currently working on a painting for one of my classes of an old building. Every time I sit down to paint I do a little bit and stop, quickly moving on to some other type of homework. I look at the painting on my living room floor and am worried that it will not meet the expectations that I had set out for it. I too am lacking in confidence with my project.
I am not new to failure, nor am I scared of it. Growing up I have had my share of disappointments and mistakes and I try to learn from them and move forward. It is not always easy, but it feels better than being discouraged. I think we need to just believe in ourselves that our projects will turn out great, and move on to the next step. I think once you get into the groove of your project you will enjoy spending the time working on it, and once it is completed you will be proud to show it off.
March 13th, 2008 at 8:17 am
Sorry, there should be a space in between my paragraphs.