The Art of Frequent Failure
The Author on a climbGrab your phone. Let's scroll back. Way back. A few heavy thumb-fulls of way back. Back before the protests, the pandemic, the new years eve photos. Yeah, there, that autumn tree. Click that.
The caption reads "Climbing rocks and sometimes trees," or something like that. It has 33 likes. A few "fun!" comments. Let's go there.
This was around the time where I started to accept total failure as part of my daily life. Two years prior to this post, I had taken a bad climbing fall and managed to damage my ankle so badly it had to be surgically rebuilt. I recovered but never successfully shook off my extreme fear of heights.
It left me grounded, quite literally. I'd go on trips to the crag, weekend camping and early morning scrambling, just to watch my friends take turns on the rock. I'd busy myself in my sketchbook, afraid to try with everyone watching, knowing I'd quit a few feet short of the top.
Eventually, I'd talk myself up, tell myself that this was the part where life gets good. Where you try, you fight, and you grow. So up the rope I'd go, only to be bailed out at the last moment, or sometimes worse, early on. I'd get as high as I could before the snap of my bone would start replaying in my ears, like a bad song on repeat, until it was so loud I'd have to signal for help.
I wish I could tell you that, one day, I reached the top of a climb and never looked back. But that's not how this worked; not how I worked. Sometimes I'd get there, but mostly I wouldn't. Sometimes I'd win, but mostly, I lost.
For the first year, this failure felt deep. Obviously I'd failed before, on much bigger stages than this. So shouldn't I be able to bounce back? I'd beat myself up constantly. Move on! I'd tell myself. OMG Stop trying it's over! But I never did, until one day, failing became just another part of my week.
Weeks spilled into months, months spilled into years. Every week I went rock climbing, every week I failed. Public, frequent failure. I can recall countless faces sitting behind me at the gym or on the trail, watching me try, and fail, over and over and over again.
Ok, let's scroll back up. All the way back up, to today. Now, it's summer during the pandemic, and I've just asked my friends to write content for my new passion project, a lifestyle newsletter, the one you are reading this article on right now. It's been nearly four years since my ankle surgery, and I've had lots of practice failing.
Being a total failure on the rock wall every single week over the last few years has been hard, but it has also taught me a lot. For instance, it taught me that success is overrated. If you are succeeding a lot, you are not trying hard enough. It also taught me that the pain failure can bring is minimal. No one is following you around, chronicling every move you make, every venture you start and fail, every climb you try. Your failure is your own, and it's as short or as long as you want to make it.
Finally, it taught me that failure is an opportunity to try again. To take a different tact, plan a new route. Frequent and public failure, for me, has meant finding freedom from it. And with that freedom, there is adventure, possibility, and the unknown. So, yes, I'll launch this newsletter. Try that online boxing class. Start my own line of handbags. Who knows what I'll fail at next, isn't that exciting?
