Failure is Great

The other day as I was describing a failure of mine to my boss I realized that I really enjoy those instances. I like when the current me is able to go back and fix some failure the past me created. I like admitting to stupid mistakes, and I like correcting them.

I wanted to write a long-winded post about this and talk about various failures of mine, but every time I start I would let myself be distracted and stop. It's sat like that since the day referenced above. Thus, this post is in essence a microcosm of the phenomenon it describes.

The one failure I originally set out to address that I will include is that of my grand scheme to post juvenile friend descriptions about people in my Facebook friends list. I started everything, beginning with a spreadsheet listing every person from the friends list. Then I used the random number generator to pick 10 people. The first was my niece Angela, and I was instantly discouraged when I realized that while I know Angela well enough I don't know that I care to write about my grade schooler niece whose account was created for FarmVille.

Then there was the brief Facebook meme that solidified my resolve to scrap the project. You might recall those couple of days where people would ask for someone to send them a random number and then they'd post a status about them. Given the similarities, my idea was suddenly far less edgy. Without the edginess all that was left was the immaturity and pettiness of it all. So I gave up.

I'm embracing the failure, though. Next time I'll put more effort into my petty juvenile ideas before I announce them, that way I'm more likely to follow through and I can have even greater failures than the past. Who knows? Maybe one will be a success instead.