When’s the last time you failed at something? You gave it your all and everything still fell to pieces. Applaud yourself for trying, don’t give up, and just know that no one is out here highlighting their failures on social media.

Every failure I’ve experience humbled me and gave me motivation to grow stronger. I’m stubborn so of course I try to out-fail myself until something sticks. Thanks mom for instilling persistence in me.

I didn’t consider myself a true adult until I mess up more than a few things.

Grounded

After college I got my first professional job as a secretary. A few months into that job, everyone got a raise because accounting said the company was under budget. Fast forward to the one-year mark, and it turns out that was a lie. They were actually over budget and layoffs happened.

My job was eliminated and I had no idea what I wanted to do with life and a writing degree. I applied for a flight attendant position because I like travel and I was bored. I was so nonchalant the entire interview because I’d never been to Texas and the flight was free.

Turns out not wanting the job made me relaxed and I got the job offer. Training was the best part of this job. I like to teach people and I got to show people my awesome study habits. Training or college didn’t prepare me for how broke I was going to be in New York with half a roommate who barely made rent.

My strength and downfall is the fact that I like to take care of people and sometimes I end up at the end of that list. I kept trying to make things work in New York and living with a roommate who was more concerned with paying her car note in California than paying rent and putting food on the table was like trying to fit a square in a circle hole. It wasn’t going to work.

I remember thinking about how I had no work/life balance, no family/friends in NYC, no money, this particular day I lost my keys, and I’m sitting on my porch pouring all my emotions out to my mother on the phone and she said those two magic words, “come home.”

Would I be happier without a job that paid me $1100 a month (after taxes) and where I got to hang out with my close friends and family? That was a risk I was willing to take.

Turns out the answer was yes and mama didn’t raise an idiot so I had another job lined up before shipping my things back to the Steel City.

Takeaways: I can do anything I put my mind to like learn a new plane configuration on a weekly basis and teach my peers how to retain this information. Crying is okay, falling is okay, I just have to keep getting back up. Helping people is cool but if you can’t help yourself you’ll both be useless. Sometimes peace is the most expensive commodity. No matter how much month you have sometimes money won’t stretch in the largest of spaces. Be so relaxed in job interviews that they want to hire you because they saw the actual you.

Royalty Woes

After coming home, I made a list of things I wanted to do in a year’s time. Publish a book was on that list. I looked up a few small time publishers (wanted to support young women who were into the publishing industry) and I discovered a small vanity publisher that sounded awesome. Two books in I got a little worried about my publisher because she was taking 50% of my royalties but didn’t offer editing or marketing services. I noticed a few typos in the books and I started doing my research on vanity presses and discovered I could probably do what she was doing and what do you know… I could.

I helped three people self-publish their own work, sifted through my publishing contract and pointed out all the things that was a breach of contract on the publisher’s part and immediately got out of it. I now know I can do my own graphic design, editing, marketing, and help others be self-published authors without taking a royalties from them. I’m now eight books in (5 of my own 3 for others) and I am the keeper of whatever royalties I feel I deserve.

Takeaways: Read the fine print and then utilize that expensive writing degree to tear it to shreds after discovering loopholes. I can do anything I put my mind to like publishing a book or eight. There’s always someone willing to pay for the information you have because they don’t have it or know how to get to where you are.

High School Sour Patch Kid

Shout out to Disney and every other romantic comedy for making high school sweethearts a thing. It’s supposed to work out according to them and they forget the part that sometimes relationships fail. It should not take multiple times for the same relationship to fail for someone to take a hint from the universe. After the not so happy ending, I published a book full of poetry on why it didn’t need to work and how failed relationships are failures.

Sometimes you need a bad relationship to show what a good one might be. After that I spent a few years being single, fell in love with myself, and it turns out I’m a pretty awesome person. In a way our failure was my success.

Takeaway: Sometimes you need to be alone to learn your love language in order to learn someone else’s. Giving myself the love I knew I deserved sets the bar for what I will and won’t stand for. The wrong relationship set me up for all the right ones.

Every experience good or bad is a writing experience. Disney movies just conveniently end at the good spots. It’s not truly the ending but they had to make it PG. Happily ever after is definitely deceptive (This is coming from an optimist I swear) .

Gravity Falls

I can indeed do whatever I put my mind to (my mom told me that so it’s true, right). There are terms and conditions to this whatever that I may have missed in the fine print because this summer I got on a skateboard in a skateboard class. It was fun. We did yoga to prepare us to balance ourselves and have a little control and we listened to someone tell us about what we should know.

What I should’ve come to terms with is my inability to walk without falling. Motivational speakers and yoga made me feel like I could conquer the world and instead I conquered the art of debating the doctor at urgent care on how I should probably get an x-ray. I broke my first bone that day, bruised my ego, and spent two weeks in a sling.

Takeaways: I must know how to walk before I can skateboard. Anything is possible, even miracles as long as they do not involve defying gravity. Speak up or you could end up not getting an x-ray because “we close in thirty minutes” and “your elbow is probably just swollen.” Also, our healthcare system is screwed up down to the foundation. Motivational speeches are not instruction. They are motivation to seek instruction. You can break your elbow.

Failures are what make us human. No one should get used to failure but not doing something because of fear that we might fail is already failure. Every failure I’ve experienced made for a great story and I didn’t even know it at the time. Some failures even changed the trajectory of my life for the better and it was the universe trying to tell me something. If I stop failing life gets boring and there’s nothing worse than a bored Aquarius.

Cheers to more failure!
Don’t forget failure is a pit stop not a destination.

xoxo

Dae’