The Freedom to Fail

It feels weirdly great to not be good at something.

I recently told one of my best friends that, until my agent took my book out on submission, I'd never really been rejected before. I told them I thought I was doing it wrong, actually — being turned down. My friend slapped the table and said of course I'm good at everything, and not to worry about the passes on my book because I am brilliant and publishing is an endless desert of passes until one day it's not. I laughed because what else can you do when one of your favorite people is presenting a case to you about how amazing you are. But the truth is: I've never really failed at much because I've never really tried to do anything I'm not good at. Like, ever. I've never been brave enough.

My younger sister has always just done whatever the heck she wants to do, regardless of whether or not she had training, permission, supplies, or even a ride to the place she needed to go. She was a great basketball player, and even better softball player, as a teenager, but she decided that actually she'd like to learn to tumble and cheer, and then she decided that actually she wanted to use her All-State choral training to become a thespian. She tried out for a musical with absolutely no formal training whatsoever, got the part, and then proceeded to TEACH HERSELF TO TAP DANCE. And that's not even including the summer she went to a one-week day camp and became like a professional flag twirler. After she beat cancer and had a baby, in her mid-20s, she was like, "I think I'll run a half-marathon" — and she jogged out the door, and next thing I knew I was cheering her on at the finish line of a 13-mile race in a whole other state. 

In all that time, I played basketball. And then I cycled. I was good at basketball and then I was great at basketball. I was good at riding a bike and then I was great at riding a bike. I picked something I was naturally skilled at, and then did it over and over and over and over, day after day after day after day, until I was as good as I could get. Same with my career. I was a good writer, and then I wrote ten hundred bazillion gadrillion words, and became a good-er writer. 

I don't even like to talk about my life — and especially my struggles — with anyone, until I have a plan in place and am on the path toward conquering the stuff that's trying to hold me back. When I tell a story about falling down, it's because I've already gotten back up and have healed from my stitches and have processed the tumble and am now ready to invite people to laugh at my carefully curated version of the event. I do not like to be seen trying to do something I might not succeed at. I do not like to be seen not having it together.

Over the past year, something really weird has happened to me. I've started doing things that sound fun to me for the sole reason of: they sound fun to me. I wanted to draw, so I bought a book and started drawing. I got obsessed with collages after watching a MOMA In The Studio video from interdisciplinary artist Helina Metaferia, and so I started ripping pages out of magazines and catalogs and junk mailers, and crafting collages with just some scissors and a glue stick. I saw a call for cat- and dog-themed cakes for a charity event for ME/CFS, so I baked and decorated some cakes, and submitted them for judging, which I have never done before in my entire life. I started building Lego again because Lego was one of my great childhood joys. 

I'm not good at any of those things. I'll never win any awards. I'll never make any money off of them. (Certainly not on the Lego! I am losing substantial money on the Lego!) 

So much of my adult life has been wrestling emotionally over lessons I should definitely have learned as a child. Like… showing your indecipherable drawings to someone who will ooh and aah over them. That wasn't my childhood, though, and I feel so grateful that it's happening for me now. 

When I show my wife my little arts or my little cakes, she’ll say I'm clever and I'm cute and my confections are delicious. When I show my friends my little drawings or my little collages, they'll say, "Wow, I love the colors!" "That's so you!" "Will you draw me one?" And they'll say it, not because any of it is anything special, but because they love me. And I'll gather and store every single compliment in my heart, like a squirrel with autumn acorns, because the kind things people say to you that are born out of nothing but love are the best kind of kind things. They only require you to be you, to let yourself be loved. 

The book rejections feel weird to me because they don't feel bad. Editors say I'm warm and brilliant! They say reading my writing is like sitting across the table from your best friend! They say I'm an icon! And I gotta be honest with you: After spending most of my creative career as a punching bag for other people to work out their own insecurities and personality disorders, that kind of "rejection" feels AMAZING. You don't think you can sell my book but you think I'm AN ICON? Well, who's gonna feel bad about that? AN ICON? Dang! Also, I grew into my own voice in the middle of recapping lesbian TV right when Twitter took off and stan culture took hold. There actually might not be anything that anyone could say that could hurt me anymore. I wrote about every single episode of Glee. My skin is as thick as a rhinoceros butt. 

I feel weird and good and happy doing things just for my own personal fun, or knowing my writing is moving even if not’s quite marketable to the person evaluating it.

It turns out you don't have to be the best at — or even good at — something for it to be valuable to you. That enjoying yourself is as good a reason as any to do a thing, even if you're "bad" at the thing you're doing. That you don't have to commodify your own curiosity. That rejection is just another, slower step forward. You really do only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

Colored pencil flowers!

Solar system collage from a furniture catalog!

Cat cakes!