Failure

Talking to my oldest brother over the weekend due to a family wedding, I discovered that he regularly refers to me as “the sister he hates.” He says this in a joking, kind way because he hates me for all the best reasons. He lists them as:

1. Got a PhD from Princeton University at age 24.

2. Has published 7 books with national publishers (and has contracts for more).

3. Is a nationally ranked triathlete who beat me by 30 minutes at the only race we’ve run together, despite the fact that she had a stress fracture in her right foot.

4. Has 5 awesome children, the oldest of whom are enrolled at MIT and Berklee School of Music.

These are all true. Strangely, I do not think of my own life this way. Rather, I think often of these facts:

1. Spent 6 years getting a PhD, then got not a single interview from the 60 jobs I applied to the year I graduated.

2. Got fired from the adjunct position at the university where I had done my undergraduate work.

3. Wrote 20 novels so badly that I will never publish them before I got a contract from a very small publisher for a book that never earned out and is now out of print.

4. Had my first big contract cancelled by a major publisher after a long, depressive episode in my life.

5. Struggled so much with one of my children that I called a helpline, genuinely afraid that I would hurt her physically. (I got therapy and so did she and we all survived and are good now).

6. Was a terrible athlete in high school, and am only now (at age 43, when it is too late) figuring out how to excel at it.

7. I have made less money writing over the last 10 years than I would have made if I had spent all those hours working minimum wage at a fast food place.

It’s really true that you can look at your life as a series of failures or a series of successes. The same life, the same facts, just turned different ways. I think that it’s also true that failing is just a way of saying giving yourself another chance for success. You can’t have success if you give up and don’t try anymore. I keep trying. If there is any formula for success, that is it. Luck is just the persistent belief that around the corner lies the next big break. And by believing it and working for it, we often make it come true.