Many of us have felt your level of failure. At 66, I've had more than my share of setbacks and obstacles ... a career that was going nowhere at age 25, three layoffs between 1992 and 2001, a longtime marriage destroyed by drug drug addiction (and eventual overdose death of my spouse), extreme depression and premature death of my oldest son. Yet you grieve, adapt and move on ... continuing to put one foot in front of the other. because, well, it is the best and only option. "Fall down seven times, get up eight."
As I treat gently toward my good night, my goal has changed. I now value one thing more than anything else ... peace of mind. Enjoyed reading your journey. -- Jim
The joke is that I tell myself that if I had as many readers as you (probably) do I'd feel like a success. Who knows whether that's true or not - as you say, we're dealing with a persistent mental habit that may not respond to achievements in the real world - but goes to show it's all about who you compare yourself to!
Hmm. It's a sad fact, pain and humiliation tend to linger, constantly informing us. Glory and success are somehow more temporary and fleeting. If lucky, they persist as a dull glow of pride and content. But pain always seems white hot and ready-sharp. Even if we aren't constantly fondling it. Probably some kind of a lizard brain explanation for that.
Sorry about this. It's very complex to find the right attitude to this if you don't get a second bite - e.g Andy Murray loses the Wimbledon Final in 2012 and wins it in 2013. Life generally offers us more complex and ambiguous states to adjust to.
Very nice. The kind of piece that is almost begging for us to deliver our own versions of this. In the second Barry book (just finished third draft) I've fictionalised a personal disaster from 1982 which only now by writing it I have finally exorcised. Achieving that also allowed me to walk away from a moment in 1990 when a work colleague (and I thought good friend) stitched me up. I was totally in the right but y'know, 1990. Letting go of those two things (both this month as it happens) feels like one of the biggest successes of my life so far.
Enjoyed this. I wrote a show for TV that bombed spectacularly and publicly. It’s only possible to say it helped in some way if you walk from the wreckage which I guess I did as I’m still working. It’s over ten years now but I still think there is a lingering PTSD.
Being 40 is not the best point on the timeline of the mortal coil. For you, it will probably get better from now on. Success is like a Secret Santa; you may never know who gave it to you, or where it came from because you are dead. I liked the Dorian Gray reference because it put me in mind of a little theory I have. One day, like a magisterial librarian, a super computer will collect and collate and curate the sum total of our written existence. In answer to the query of some curious dude, Bodley (for I named it thus) will think. Bodley will sort the wheat from the chaff. Bodley will resist political interference and almost certainly, Bodley will avoid falling into the trap of pronouncing favourably in the direction of orthodoxy, if, that is, the heterodox text is deemed by Bodley to be 'true'. Suppose you had a theory about isolating and diagnosing a virus more quickly that at present. You feed your theory to Bodley and the super brain gets to work. It first goes through every paper, every poster, every recorded symposium on the subject and measures it against a raft of criteria. It presents you, not only with what it thinks are the most relevant materials but also-and this is the clever bit-takes a highly informed view of your probabilities of success, including recipes. Its intellectual power and ability to make connections is virtually limitless.
So perhaps one day, Bodley will declare you a genius. Don't laugh. Somebody somewhere, hitherto unknown to us will win the lottery, but this time it will be more by judgement than luck.
I feel this a lot. By most objective measures I've done pretty well for myself but I generally feel a failure because I never did very well at the things I *wanted* to succeed at. I'm prouder of the handful of records I released on tiny independent labels than I am of anything in the career that feeds and houses my family. Furthermore, I didn't want to just succeed at these things (music, comedy, writing) - I wanted to succeed against the odds, as an outsider savant who would leapfrog the boring unglamorous learning of craft and dazzle everyone with his raw brilliance. I don't think getting into punk helped in this regard. Nor having parents of the '68 generation who poured scorn on the same institutional process (school, university, career) that they drilled us into.
In the animated show BoJack Horseman (it's astonishing, seriously, watch it), Dianne fixates on writing a great and profound book which will speak to troubled youth because "if I don't, if I can't, then all the awful things that happened to me weren't good damage, they were just damage..." - I've definitely hung on to this feeling for way too long: that I need a stellar success that makes sense of all the failure and unhappiness and anything less is compromise and failure.
There's another great exchange in BoJack, actually:
"Would it make you happy if your movie was better?"
"Yes for a little bit!"
"Would it make you happy to go to New York and be in this play with Jill?"
Interesting piece, with much to relate to, both personally and in the experience of watching my son striving to realise his own creative dreams. Of course you know you have to keep going, despite and because of it all. As they say, ‘Those that can, do, those that can’t,....’ - yeah, that was me.
PS, you shouldn’t never, ever feel inferior to Matt Forde.
I had a similar definining failure moment myself when I was younger, and felt a lot of my feelings about it in this piece. It's good to know I'm not alone, mostly because it lessens the shame that I feel around still wanting that dream, instead of that moral victory that people preach is more virtuous: "readjust those expectations, realize it wasn't meant to be, move on."
When you feel like it's tangible and THERE and possible, it's so hard to balance the desire to be "selfish" and KEEP GOING, rather than taking the metaphorical L and (apparently) growing to be a better person by wanting less.
Many of us have felt your level of failure. At 66, I've had more than my share of setbacks and obstacles ... a career that was going nowhere at age 25, three layoffs between 1992 and 2001, a longtime marriage destroyed by drug drug addiction (and eventual overdose death of my spouse), extreme depression and premature death of my oldest son. Yet you grieve, adapt and move on ... continuing to put one foot in front of the other. because, well, it is the best and only option. "Fall down seven times, get up eight."
As I treat gently toward my good night, my goal has changed. I now value one thing more than anything else ... peace of mind. Enjoyed reading your journey. -- Jim
The joke is that I tell myself that if I had as many readers as you (probably) do I'd feel like a success. Who knows whether that's true or not - as you say, we're dealing with a persistent mental habit that may not respond to achievements in the real world - but goes to show it's all about who you compare yourself to!
I read a book called "It's never too late to be great" which was useful in thinking about this topic. Our media fetishises young success too much.
Hmm. It's a sad fact, pain and humiliation tend to linger, constantly informing us. Glory and success are somehow more temporary and fleeting. If lucky, they persist as a dull glow of pride and content. But pain always seems white hot and ready-sharp. Even if we aren't constantly fondling it. Probably some kind of a lizard brain explanation for that.
Sorry about this. It's very complex to find the right attitude to this if you don't get a second bite - e.g Andy Murray loses the Wimbledon Final in 2012 and wins it in 2013. Life generally offers us more complex and ambiguous states to adjust to.
I had a minor acting role in your play and remember it as a lot of fun! I relate to a lot of what you wrote. Great writing!
Very nice. The kind of piece that is almost begging for us to deliver our own versions of this. In the second Barry book (just finished third draft) I've fictionalised a personal disaster from 1982 which only now by writing it I have finally exorcised. Achieving that also allowed me to walk away from a moment in 1990 when a work colleague (and I thought good friend) stitched me up. I was totally in the right but y'know, 1990. Letting go of those two things (both this month as it happens) feels like one of the biggest successes of my life so far.
Enjoyed this. I wrote a show for TV that bombed spectacularly and publicly. It’s only possible to say it helped in some way if you walk from the wreckage which I guess I did as I’m still working. It’s over ten years now but I still think there is a lingering PTSD.
This is why I like the Mia Hansen-Love film, Eden, based on her brother.
Being 40 is not the best point on the timeline of the mortal coil. For you, it will probably get better from now on. Success is like a Secret Santa; you may never know who gave it to you, or where it came from because you are dead. I liked the Dorian Gray reference because it put me in mind of a little theory I have. One day, like a magisterial librarian, a super computer will collect and collate and curate the sum total of our written existence. In answer to the query of some curious dude, Bodley (for I named it thus) will think. Bodley will sort the wheat from the chaff. Bodley will resist political interference and almost certainly, Bodley will avoid falling into the trap of pronouncing favourably in the direction of orthodoxy, if, that is, the heterodox text is deemed by Bodley to be 'true'. Suppose you had a theory about isolating and diagnosing a virus more quickly that at present. You feed your theory to Bodley and the super brain gets to work. It first goes through every paper, every poster, every recorded symposium on the subject and measures it against a raft of criteria. It presents you, not only with what it thinks are the most relevant materials but also-and this is the clever bit-takes a highly informed view of your probabilities of success, including recipes. Its intellectual power and ability to make connections is virtually limitless.
So perhaps one day, Bodley will declare you a genius. Don't laugh. Somebody somewhere, hitherto unknown to us will win the lottery, but this time it will be more by judgement than luck.
I feel this a lot. By most objective measures I've done pretty well for myself but I generally feel a failure because I never did very well at the things I *wanted* to succeed at. I'm prouder of the handful of records I released on tiny independent labels than I am of anything in the career that feeds and houses my family. Furthermore, I didn't want to just succeed at these things (music, comedy, writing) - I wanted to succeed against the odds, as an outsider savant who would leapfrog the boring unglamorous learning of craft and dazzle everyone with his raw brilliance. I don't think getting into punk helped in this regard. Nor having parents of the '68 generation who poured scorn on the same institutional process (school, university, career) that they drilled us into.
In the animated show BoJack Horseman (it's astonishing, seriously, watch it), Dianne fixates on writing a great and profound book which will speak to troubled youth because "if I don't, if I can't, then all the awful things that happened to me weren't good damage, they were just damage..." - I've definitely hung on to this feeling for way too long: that I need a stellar success that makes sense of all the failure and unhappiness and anything less is compromise and failure.
There's another great exchange in BoJack, actually:
"Would it make you happy if your movie was better?"
"Yes for a little bit!"
"Would it make you happy to go to New York and be in this play with Jill?"
"Yes for a little bit!"
Interesting piece, with much to relate to, both personally and in the experience of watching my son striving to realise his own creative dreams. Of course you know you have to keep going, despite and because of it all. As they say, ‘Those that can, do, those that can’t,....’ - yeah, that was me.
PS, you shouldn’t never, ever feel inferior to Matt Forde.
I grappled with a similar thought a while ago, in a different sort of way: https://authorselectric.blogspot.com/2013/09/nick-green-and-on-pedestal-these-words.html?m=1
I had a similar definining failure moment myself when I was younger, and felt a lot of my feelings about it in this piece. It's good to know I'm not alone, mostly because it lessens the shame that I feel around still wanting that dream, instead of that moral victory that people preach is more virtuous: "readjust those expectations, realize it wasn't meant to be, move on."
When you feel like it's tangible and THERE and possible, it's so hard to balance the desire to be "selfish" and KEEP GOING, rather than taking the metaphorical L and (apparently) growing to be a better person by wanting less.