This project needed a title. I gotta say I agonized over it for like five whole minutes before deciding on “Failing Forward”.
I didn’t invent the term. I’m not sure who did. ”Failing Forward” is a term we used in tabletop roleplaying games. In these games you’re going to fail at something you try to do. Maybe you get caught pickpocketing. Maybe you die. Maybe you don’t save the maiden. Now, you can let this ruin your fun and the fun of everyone you’re playing with or try to find a way to get a do-over, but that’s missing the point. If the possibility of failure isn’t there, there aren’t any stakes and you’re not going to have fun anyway.
What you need to do is find a way to move on from and even derive value and enjoyment from failing or after failing. A failure, with a few exceptions, isn’t an ending. It’s not a new beginning either. It’s not always a lesson. It’s a thing that happens and you can either cope well or badly. I try to always make it a point to do the former, even in real life.
I promise this isn’t some startup CEO-ass self help guru thing. I profoundly dislike that shit. This isn’t an advice blog, and if you catch me accidentally giving it you should remember that I’m a broke 35 year old relying on the kindness of strangers to not die over a bug bite.
I just thought it was a clever title since my liver failed and I have to (or get to) rebuild a body and most of a life from scratch because of it. I’m just looking to get something positive out of something undeniably bad. It’s daunting, and scary, and certainly already the hardest thing I’ve ever tried to do. I may still die or lose my mind. But there’s a hope there, maybe one that wasn’t there before all this. Not everyone gets a second chance at life, or the opportunity to start the whole thing over.
So yeah, the name of this thing is “Failing Forward”. I’ll never not pretend I’m not a marketing genius. I’m hoping you enjoy it, not just because it makes me feel connected and more alive, but because I really want your money to buy things like medicine, or revenge, or a gift for my wife, or a computer built within the last decade.
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