the art of failing

i constantly feel like i'm failing. constantly. there's always more to do. more to accomplish. more to be.

part of what's taken the hit in all the busyness of late is my writing. there was so much going on over the holidays that i rarely got enough sleep, and thus didn't wake up as early to write. {my lovely bout of strep throat about a week before christmas certainly didn't help either.} now i'm just getting back into the habit of waking up before the kids to get my thoughts down.

i feel off because i haven't written as much. i feel less connected to myself. yet the reasons i haven't written are good ones.

i constantly choose between good things. i don't have time for all the things. recently peter and i have talked about margin. {there's that word again} what would give us more margin in our lives? my answer: less responsibilities. but in a culture that praises busyness it's difficult to shed responsibilities.

do i want my house to be somewhat organized? my kids to be healthy? us to be healthy? my family to eat well? to make a difference in my world?
yes.
i'll need 30 hours/day, please.

there are a lot of things i want to do. a lot. and every single last one of them takes time.

some days i wonder what my life would be like now if i had pursued a career. if we had moved somewhere else. if. if. if. it's not that i'm upset with where we are, i just wonder how things would be if i had done things differently. i wonder most on the hard days.

but it does no one any good to wonder. i look at the world that "might have been" with rose-colored glasses. no matter what path you choose there are hard days. nothing is perfect. no one is perfect. and perfectionism is a b. believe me, i've lived with it long enough to know.

i'm still learning how to fail up. part of the problem is that i hate failing. really, really hate it. i hate the gut twisting feeling that goes with it. the shame of failing. i hate it. i know it takes a few knocks to get things right sometimes, but i'm no good at taking them if i'm not on a soccer field.

some days i have to stop myself and think - what's the worst that could likely happen in this situation? because most of the time it's really not that bad.

but i don't even like writing about failure. even when it sounds much better - the art of failing. because it is an art to fail up. to fail well, and make it less of a true failure. but i still shy away from it. people don't like thinking about failure, much less make it an art form. so why write about it?

this draft has been on my list for a few months now. sitting and mocking me. i failed to finish a post on failure. seriously ridiculous.

but how do you fail up? sometimes i'm not entirely sure. but i think the biggest thing is to learn all you can from it, and keep on going despite it.

i tend to shy away from failure even after it has happened. i don't want to think about it. i don't want to dwell on it. but there is a difference between dwelling on it and using it - dissecting it and learning from it and putting into practice what you learned.

changing. using it to change for the better.

change is hard, but it happens whether we acknowledge it and purposefully do it, or simply let it happen.

i've failed a lot in my life. i'm sure i'll fail plenty more.
it's about time i started making it an art form.

xoxo