Writing is Cheaper than Therapy

Still figuring it out..."It" being life.

I'm going to be honest.

The first few, and let's be honest, more than the first few, posts of this blog will be garbage.

And that's because progress isn't linear.

We were taught growing up that if we work hard at something, we will get better at it. School progresses in grades, video games have levels, job have promotions to the next pay grade.

Here's the secret that no one talks about. In real life, we move backwards just as often as we move forward in the beginning and that's boring.

No one wants to see the slow, arduous progress of the protagonist losing boxing match after match until she gets better, and the movie always ends on the high of the ultimate victory, not defeat.

So we're seduced by the illusion of visible, linear progress, the siren call of learning from our mistakes that leads to getting better and making fewer errors. When it doesn't match up to real life we get discouraged and give up. 

Now, there are lots of real life stories about how 12 publishers in 1995 lost billions of dollars by passing on Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and how Shopify started as a snowboard equipment company that failed and is now worth $10 billion as an e-commerce platform.

But that doesn't always soothe our bruised egos when our failures feel so personal and so devastating. 

At the risk of making this first post too heavy, something that has helped me is to write about or talk about my failures, which always makes this a little lighter to bear.

Hearing stories about how good is borne from failure creates hope too.

I hope to write about my many failings at some point with the hopes that it might be helpful or even inspire. If I've learned anything from failing again and again, it's not that it necessarily makes you stronger. It's that you can learn from it if you want to, use it if it comforts someone else, and let it motivate you to not give up if you write about it (or go to therapy).