“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”

The word can mean many things, but it seems to universally, across its myriad uses, have a strongly negative connotation - at least to my mind. I suppose there’s an argument to be made that a failure is just an opportunity for growth, an obstacle to be learned from and then overcome, that it’s not really wholly negative at all. Nonetheless, the silver lining on the proverbial cloud doesn’t change the fact that it’s still a cloud, and doesn’t necessarily keep it from raining on your parade in the first place. (Disclaimer: I’m writing this blog post while not in the best of moods - in case you couldn’t already figure that out from the post’s title or tone - so take any perceived pessimism with a grain of salt, and not as a reflection of my outlook on life generally.)

We can all think of things that we associate with failure, the economy being the big one right now but of course it’s by no means the only prominent example. You could look at a political campaign - whether presidential or one against a certain state proposition - and call it a failure… though in the former case you might be happy it - or rather, he - failed (if you share my particular political inclinations) whereas the failure of the latter could render words like “angry,” “discouraged,” and “resentful” hard-pressed to accurately describe your (or my) emotions. Talk about politics as personal, huh? (At least for the one side, but that’s a topic for another post.) Or about politics as exemplifying how success for one means failure for another. If one person wins, another has to lose? (There’s that pessimism again.)

While the economic and political arenas can usually provide us with plentiful chances to use the word “failure,” they obviously haven’t cornered the market on inadequacy and defeat. Failure is oftentimes a lot closer to home, to the extent that a person could talk about “feeling like a failure.” What does that even mean, though? At what point does one go from “human being” to “failure”?

I could think up all kinds of life situations & all sorts of psychological motivations that could have a person consider themself a failure, but ultimately, though I do (apparently) like to write and ramble, I should come to the point that makes most sense for me at this time, the one that inspired this post. And that is this: I think “failure” isn’t just about attempting something and not succeeding. It’s not just about making mistakes or goofing up, and not about trying but not quite managing to achieve your goals. It’s definitely not about money or votes, and it’s not even about how many people (don’t) find you attractive enough or interesting enough to talk to.

It is instead about change - or more accurately, the lack of change. It’s about not moving forward, not going anywhere. It’s about not succeeding not because you screwed up or didn’t have what it took, but because you didn’t make the attempt to begin with. It’s about not growing, not reaching, and not doing.

Failure, at its worst, happens when nothing happens at all. Even if the alternative means having to get rained on once in a while.

Yep, news. And lots of it. Whether it’s the oft-updated drop-down of “Latest BBC Headlines” that comes standard as a Live Bookmark in Firefox or the seemingly exhaustive (and sometimes, exhausting) list of stories I see in my frequent trips to Google News, I have been reading the news like there’s no tomorrow. (Of course, to hear some journalists tell it, there might not be. Global collapse, anyone?)

Okay, so maybe I’m not reading every single story I see. I mean, let’s face it, do I really care that so-and-so is now playing for such-and-such team or that Actor X has broken up with Actress Y and is now dating Model Z? Sorry, just doesn’t matter to me. I can’t help but wonder, though, if in my desire to stay informed about everything else in the world, I might be going a bit overboard. Overdosing on reality. Filling myself up with stories that - in the long run - are not really all that relevant.

Granted, that might be the case for most people and for most of the news they take in. A lot of the stories we read, watch, or hear about are ones we probably didn’t need to know, anyway. And even more importantly, given the state of the world and how “negative” much of the news is, is it even healthy to take it all in if it doesn’t personally affect us?

But how do we know that it won’t affect us unless we know about it? And even if it doesn’t, even if a story’s about something taking place thousands and thousands of miles away on a different continent across an ocean in some farflung part of the world, isn’t it good to know about it, anyway? See how other people live, struggle, and (hopefully) survive? I ask myself these questions, but I’m not always sure of the answers.

In the quest to stay informed about the goings-on on this big little planet of ours, how much information is too much?

Takes a while, but finally one particular line in the song sinks in and reinforces the message of what I’m reading: “Don’t wait until tomorrow.”

As January rolls forward and 2008 steadily increases its hold on our calendars, I have - like so many others - decided to take the beginning of yet another revolution around the Sun as an opportunity to make a (hopefully) lasting change in my life. This will be the year, I say, fully aware of the cliché; this year will be different, I predict, knowing as I do so that I’m echoing the thoughts of countless other individuals bent on a “fresh start.” This year, we all chirp in unison, this year we will be different.

And yet, here I have to go somewhat out of tune. Though I do want to be “different,” I’m not necessarily resolving to complete all my personal projects, work out more regularly, or pay off debts. Nor have I made up my mind to eat more healthily, get more sleep, or reduce stress. In fact, I’ve tried to not really make any definitive determinations about these or any of a myriad of other vague-but-worthwhile-sounding goals that probably resonate with most of the people out there.

Don’t get me wrong: these goals are all ones that I would very much like to achieve, even all this year if possible, at least partially. The thing is, though, these kinds of goals are all about being “better” in some way. And quite honestly, as a New Year’s resolution, I don’t think that will help me all that much.

So I’ve got another idea. Instead of resolving to be better in some area of my life, I resolve to completely forget about being better and to just go forward without hesitation.

I won’t worry - as I’ve so often tended to in the past - about whether or not I’m doing the best that can be done; I’ll just strive to do the best that I can do. I likewise won’t ever feel like I have to do something flawlessly the first time around; I’ll remind myself that pretty much everyone can find something they don’t like about themselves or their own work and I’ll accept that improvements usually can be and even have to be made, and I’ll be thankful for any chance to do so.

I won’t focus on what I don’t know, but instead will focus on what I do know, and I’ll rejoice in the fact that there’s so much more to learn; I similarly won’t think that I can’t do something until I know “enough” about a particular subject. I mean, sure, there are plenty of times when you can’t just get up and go, when you have to know something about what you’re doing before you can begin, but more often than not the best way to get that knowledge is to just brace yourself and dive in. I won’t be afraid to take my own advice and do the same, figurative mask and snorkel at the ready.

Finally, I definitely won’t feel like I have to do everything all at once. As many goals and dreams and plans as I might have, I’ll take things one at a time, and once and for all I’ll recognize that I can’t do anything until I start something; doing everything might be unrealistic but that’s no reason not to try.

And actually, in that last little independent clause we have in a nutshell the crux of my rather long and perhaps somewhat convoluted post. I am and have always been a perfectionist. When I do things, I want to do things well. Really well. But the perfectionist’s dilemma - my dilemma, too much of the time - is that the oft-quoted axiom that “practice makes perfect” is, actually, a lie.

“Perfection” is impossible, and if you take perfectionism too far, you’ll take that inescapable impossibility too much to heart and either never start something - because, hey, it (and/or you) will never be perfect, why bother? - or you’ll start but then not follow through. This can lead to ambitious projects being left on the backburner until blackened to a crisp and other nice-but-lofty goals left by the wayside and forgotten.

But no longer. Striving for perfection is, if you’ll pardon my language, damned counterproductive, and I want no part in it. This year, I will strive instead to just do, without the worry.

This year, I resolve to be imperfect.

So now, after spending much time fiddling with WordPress configuration options, reading documentation, and just generally figuring out what all I can do with this blog now that it’s finally up and running, I find myself forced to weigh my choices. Should I stay up and write the long and insightful post that I’d imagined as the key ritual of this “inauguration” of my wonderful and long-anticipated (by me, anyway) blog? Or should I give in and go to bed?

…

Yes, actually, I think I will have to go with the latter choice; bed it is.