When one is trying to motivate herself to get back into a more regular writing schedule, she may occasionally dig back into her old work to fortify her confidence and give her some ideas. (I'll stop with the third person, now, too. It gets old, doesn't it? And confusing.)
The current trend in business these days, if you believe TED, seems to be about how Failure is the new Success. (whoops! It's just too darn easy!) Learning from failure, teaching from failure, etc. It reminded me of an essay I wrote years ago about being wrong. I submitted it to NPR's This I Believe segment and it is posted still on their website - here. I wrote about being singled out as someone who could be counted on to put my foot in my mouth and say the wrong thing. Regularly. This is not something that many of you are just now discovering. But go ahead...click on the link. Read for yourself. I'll wait....
Done? Good. The thing about being wrong (as I wrote in the essay, in case you didn't really read it) is that it gives you 100% of the possibilities of any given situation. And if you are comfortable with being wrong, as I am, then you don't feel so badly if you've made the wrong--or other--decision. The consequences after either decision, right or wrong, are just information for the next decision. Learning happens, or it doesn't, so the lesson comes around again and gives you opportunities to sharpen, or ignore, your instincts. That's what's so fun about life.
I had to learn to be comfortable with being wrong. Besides having been criticized for many years about my choices as a wife and a parent, I also really do make a lot of "other" choices. Quitting school to get married, quitting a job at the beginning of a recession, quitting lots of things I probably should have stuck with longer, but didn't for what seemed like a good idea at the time. Except smoking. Buying a used transmission for my used Mercury station wagon. Twice. There are more, but that's enough.
I could have made better...I mean... different choices, but those were the choices I made and I'm sticking with them. Whether I realized it at the time, I always learned something from my decisions. Sometimes I learned that I wished I had kept my mouth shut, spent more money (or less), stayed home instead of going out, wore more clothes or left earlier. But where's the fun in doing everything right all the time. Or, thinking you do?
Seriously, if you can't be comfortable with being wrong at my age, then getting even older is going to be a much harder process. Happily, also at this age, you don't remember half the things you do, so who's to say who's wrong and who's right anyway?
(Maybe not a plastic dress for Easter...)
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