On Failing

Today I received a rejection letter (well, a rejection e-mail) letting me know that a play I’d written that I really, really loved was not going to be part of a festival that I really, really like and admire.

Now, this isn’t unusual.

When I first started writing, a friend of mine said “What’s the matter?  You weren’t getting rejected enough as an actor?”

I didn’t really get what she meant at the time, but now I’m very aware.  Writing is to people with low self-esteem what a heat lamp is to an ice cube.  You know eventually it’ll destroy you, it’s just a question of how long it’ll take and whether or not you’ll actually enjoy being a puddle.

So now I get rejected for something every day.  That’s not an exaggeration either.  It really is an every day occurence.  Sometimes it’s twice daily.  Sometimes even three times, and those are the days I put on opera, get in the tub, and try to summon the spirit of Glenn Close in “Fatal Attraction” so she can slay all my oppressors.

But most of the time I just shrug and keep going.

I guess it’s because I’ve become immune to it--rejection.  Or at least, I like to think I am, and then every once in awhile something comes along that I really, really want--a job, an opportunity, a role--and when I don’t get it, it feels like The Big One.  The rejection that finally makes me go “You know what?  I’ve had enough.  I want to be like one of those people on Where Are They Now? who had one hit song in the 70’s and lives in Hawaii now teaching yoga to at risk youths.”

And what do I do when those rejections roll around?

I think about how I’m feeling.  How disappointed I am.  How much I want to give up.  And I tell...no one.

I bottle it up and I throw the bottle in the nearest body of water.  At this point, I’m probably one of the biggest ocean polluters in the world.  The lakes and rivers are littered with bottles of my neverending devastation.  If you ever find one, don’t open it.  Disappointment is permanently carbonated and no human being could withstand that much self-pity.

Today it occurred to me how odd it is that someone with as big a mouth as me, who talks about anything and everything, would avoid talking about something as much as I avoid talking about failure and rejection.

Oh, when something good happens I can’t talk about it fast enough, but the failures happen more than the successes, and I spend more time figuring out how not to talk about those than I do at pretty much anything else.  You ever watch a spokesperson for a company after a recall try desperately to spin the whole thing and think--I feel you, man.  I’ve been there.

There’s something about talking about failure that absolutely terrifies me.  Sometimes it feels like if I don’t talk about them, they didn’t happen.  But by that logic, not talking about that movie I never made with Helen Mirren would eventually get her to return my calls.

I wish we could all talk about failure more.  Maybe it would let the air out of it if we did.  Perhaps it would dispel the illusion of power that it creates by being that thing we don’t talk about.

The best stuff I’ve ever done was done becasue I wrestled with the threat of failure and won, but if I”m being honest...There’s so much more I haven’t done because failure’s threat kicked my ass that day.  It beat me down, and I retreated to something a little bit safer.

The list of things I haven’t done because I was worried that I would fail and people would make fun of me for failing and then I’d be too crippled to do anything ever again is...Well, it feels endless.  But it also feels manageable--as long as I don’t talk about it.

So here I am--talking about it.

I fail.  I fail all the time.  Sometimes I fail because of forces beyond my control, but sometimes I’m just a big idiot and I fail at something I really should have succeeded at.  Sometimes I fail in little, almost adorable ways, and sometimes I fail so spectacularly it makes getting out of bed the next day seem nearly impossible.

Writing it now, it seems silly--obvious.  Of course I fail.  Everybody fails.  But see--that’s the whole point.  Just writing about it now seems to be taking some of its power away.  It’s liberating--and also pretty terrifying.  Like it’s a big dog that’s letting me pet it, but at any moment, it could just bite my hand off and spit it back at me.

Still--I hope this helps you, the reader, or, you know, whoever--talk about your own failures so you can stop giving a damn about them.  I mean, that’s never really going to happen.  You’re always going to give a damn about them, but don’t let them constrain you.  Don’t let them get in the way of you taking big swings.  And when they happen, don’t be afraid to talk about them.

Talk about your failures as much as you talk about your sucesses.  Failure is one of the only topics of conversation that actually benefits both the person talking about it and the person hearing it.  It makes the person talking about it feel better and it lets the other person know that they can talk about their own failures too.

It’s amazing.  As someone who’s doing it right now, I can’t recommend it highly enough.

So give it a try.

Then shrug--and keep going.