I Am a Failure

I’m not sure why, but this seemed like the right subject for my first real post.  Don’t worry – this is not a pity party.  But I believe it’s often best to lead with your weakness.  That’s Biblical.  It’s not always about saying, hey look at me, I’m smart and confident and I have all of the answers.  Sometimes it’s about saying hey, I don’t have all of the answers – I’m deeply flawed just like you, but maybe we can comfort each other and share with each other and together we’ll be stronger. 

And boy do I have a long string of failures.  Like I mentioned in my previous post, I recently heard Scott Adams on the radio, and he was talking about how he’d had a long string of failures before he finally hit on something that succeeded.  Me?  I don’t even have the success at the end to make this inspirational.  But maybe you’re like me, and you’re clawing and struggling to get through and maybe it’ll help to hear someone else’s struggles, just to know that you’re not alone.

Career.  I’ve had a string of jobs that have not worked out, and I’m currently looking for a new job because my employer has reduced me to a part time position.  Relationships – not married, no girlfriend, and frankly I don’t think I’m very desirable to the opposite sex.  Spiritually – well, I’m sure future posts will lay out my failings there in more detail, so let’s skip over that for now.

But where my failures really shine is in my special projects.  I think a lot of us have these – the personal, pour-your-heart into it projects that you think maybe, just maybe, will launch you to a new level of personal success, if not financially, then at least something that you think your peers respect and that you can point to as something you’ve accomplished.

My most recent one was art class.  I’ve always wanted to take an art class, just for fun and to be better at drawing.  And I saw that there was a class at the Burbank Adult School.  The classes were fun, and I learned some basic techniques.  The teacher is a great cheerleader, and I felt like I was doing some good stuff.  But when I got home, and worked alone, negative thoughts crept in.  Actually, ‘crept in’ is not accurate.  See, in some ways, I’m a perfectionist.  And it seems silly in retrospect that I would expect so much from myself with only a couple of classes, but pretty soon the voices in my head were shouting at me about how much I sucked.

I actually am proud of the couple of drawings I did, especially my Death Star, but I had to quit.  When I do, for example, a crossword puzzle, sometimes I can finish it, and sometimes I have to glance at some of the answers, but I don’t get upset with myself if I can’t do it.  But with drawing, something in my brain went haywire, and I had to stop just to preserve my own peace of mind.

Before that was my song project.  I came up with part of a song 15-20 years ago, and recently I decided to try to get it recorded.  I paid my friend Chris $200 and he helped me work out the chords and let me use his home studio setup.  I finished writing it.  Chris played guitar and bass.  Another friend contributed cahone and tambourine.  And Chris and my friend Christine sang the parts.  And I don’t like it.  Chris and I have tried different things, but it just doesn’t sound like it does in my head.  I think maybe getting different people to sing it might help.  But I’ve yet to find the right voice.

Then there’s the game.  Ah, yes, surely Matt, the game master, could put together a game that would appeal to a game manufacturer.  I spent about a year coming up with the concept, play testing, getting the artwork done, and so on.  Spent a lot of money on it, too.  Then I started sending out pitches to various companies.  And … no interest.  I’ve come to realize it’s my own fault.  I really did no market research.  If I’d even thought through what I know of the game market, just as a person who buys games, I would have seen the problem.

See, when I was a kid, my brother and I found a Hoyle’s Book of Card Games.  And what was cool was that all we needed was that book and a deck of cards.  Whenever we got tired of one game, we’d try another one.  And I thought it would be cool if there was something like that in the stores.  That’s what my game is – it’s 10 fairly simple games that you can play with one set of cards.  But that’s not what manufacturers want.  They want a single game that’s moderately complicated, and has room for expansions.  Oddly enough, they’re more interested in how they can make money than in how you can give the consumer 10 games at once for one low price.

Screenplays – I’ve written several.  I think it’s fair to say each one gets better than the last.  I’ve sent them out to festivals in the hopes of getting some kind of attention, but no luck.

I had a cool idea for an app a couple of years ago.  It was called No Ring Zone.  The idea was that it would always be running and you could program it to automatically turn your cell phone ringer down or off when you were at specific locations: church, school, theaters, etc.  The problem was that it had to always be running in the background, so it would have sucked your battery dry.

And then there’s film school – one huge, expensive project that led nowhere.

I could keep going.  But what’s the point of listing all of these failures?  And has any good come from it?

Well, I have learned some things.  I can draw a little now.  I have a cool-ass Death Star.  I’ve learned how to write screenplays.  I still have the artwork for my game and at some point I’ll probably start over and use that artwork for a game that’s more commercially viable.

So, I have learned some things.  And I’ll keep plugging away.  Because these are things that I enjoy.  I love brainstorming story ideas.  I’m pretty happy sitting at the table and playing through a game by myself to see how it works.  And I figure that if God wants me to succeed with one of my ideas, he’ll work that out.  It’s my job just to be diligent with what I’ve got and keep on trying.