On Failure...

Life as a freelancer is like a rollercoaster....if the rollercoaster was on fire and you had to fend off wild grizzly bears while skeezy businessmen tried to get you to sign inadvisable contracts. Suffice it to say, failure comes with the territory. As many times as you triumph, you will fail, often embarrassingly and in spectacular manner.

A funny thing starts to happen, though. You begin to embrace the failure. Don't get me wrong; obviously I much prefer success. But I no longer fear failure. It no longer comes with that paralyzing feeling that kept me hiding in my room or sprinting for solitude early in my career.

Now, we all know the cliches. "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." "Pain is weakness leaving the body." "Success is learning from failure." Blah, blah. Blah. BLAH. It's beaten into all our heads from the time we can understand what's going on. It's such a common idea, though, that I don't think we really understand or grasp the true scope of it all.

I'm hitting the point in my life where some friends are settling in to life with their spouses, some with kids, some with jobs and homes they'll keep for the rest of their lives. And others are freaking out, trying frantically to grab a hold of that kind of life. A good friend asked me the other day "Why am I burnt out on everything at 25?" I kind of had to laugh to myself. I'm no stranger to the feeling. I ran away from everything secure to live in a town where I knew no one in a house with complete strangers I'd met on craigslist and to work at a job for a guy I'd met once. Then when that didn't work I uprooted again to move to another brand new place. I'm constantly burnt out, constantly failing my expectations and that's what's driving me to pursue new things.

You see, failure doesn't have a specific definition. It can be based on parents' expectations, friends' ideas of what's best, society norms, or, more commonly for me, what your own picture of your future life looks like. But failure does not mean the end. Every time I jump to something new I have an ideal image of how things will work there. And every time it doesn't work out I'm faced, we're all faced, with a choice. Let that failure to meet expectations define us or let it guide our next steps.

Life is not a mountaintop. Obviously it differs based on your chosen lifestyle. But for me, and many of the people I associate with now, life is a crazy, chaotic, messed up series of stairways, slides, hills and summits. And every little "Failure" along the way is an adventure. You can choose to see it as a roadblock that will "burn you out" or you can set new goals, new images and expectations. I have news: YOU WILL FAIL AGAIN, and again, and again, and probably again. But screw it. That's more chances to find the life and adventures that will make you happy.

I won't lie. I hit walls all the time. I get burnt out. I have monthly mid-life crises. I panic. I don't know what to do. But there's endless potential in this life. It's not a box. The world isn't flat. If you're failing that picture you had of what your life was supposed to be then damn it change it! Failure is not the end. It's the beginning of the next chapter.

And if you don't like my ranting, here's a cliche quote on failure: "Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." - Winston Churchill

- Galen Murray -

Visual Vagabonds Owner and DP