Monthly Archives: November 2013

I’m failing, and I will get up

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I am failing.  At least I feel like I am failing, so the end result is the same.  Stress and anxiety.

The good news is that I feel like I am failing in my professional life, not my personal life.  Plus, I am aware that I am failing.  I have had some instances in the past where I thought I was doing a good job, but those around me didn’t.  I would rather be “in the know” on this topic and not surprised at the end.

Feeling like a failure is no fun.  It really sucks, actually.  My confidence is tested, I question my judgement about most everything, my nerves are stretched, and I may, just may, have a small touch of paranoia.  (Now, I’ll be concerned that you all are talking about me behind my back after reading this post.  Hmmm….maybe should rethink posting this.)

While I am not enjoying this interlude, I am not fearful of it.  Some of the most important milestones and turning points in my life have happened as a result of a failure.

I have recently heard a lot of people around me say things like, “I refuse to fail” or “I will do anything to keep from failing” or the old standby “Failure is not an option” and I think “That’s unrealistic.”  And it’s a lost opportunity to grow.

I have learned more from my past failures than from any of my successes.  No lie.  As painful as they were when I was going through them, I know that I am a better person because of those failures.

I used to interview up to around 100 people per year for a training program.  One of my favorite questions to ask was “Tell me about a time when things didn’t go the way that you planned.”  A very open-ended question.  Most of the candidates that I interviewed were just out of college, looking for their first “real” job, so I heard lots of stories about group projects that weren’t smooth, or summer jobs that weren’t all that were promised and so forth.  I was interested in hearing how their project had gone awry and how they tried to mitigate, but I was always most interested and impressed by those who ended the answer by then saying, “And what that experience taught me was…..”  Yes, I used to think, someone who learned from adversity.

So, I’m in a super-sucky place right now.  I wonder what I’ll learn.  I’m really looking for a bright side here, and learning is it.  Smile at me, people, when you see me walking by, and just know–my brain cells are expanding from all the learning going on.

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Completely and totally changing topics, I mentioned in my last post that I was going to start spicing up my tweets.

Did It.  By Accident.

My friend, Nikki, and I had dinner last night and we discussed how we didn’t understand all the selfies girls took these days where they were pooching out their lips, like duck lips.  So, today I tweeted Nikki a selfie of me doing the duck lip thing:

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Then I quickly had to tweet:

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I hate when I get my “d”s and “f”s confused.  It causes all kinds of issues.  Eh, in this case, however, it was probably ok either way.

 

When it’s time to write my biography

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I was listening to Marketplace News on my local public radio on the way home tonight, and I heard an interview with Nick Bilton about his new book, Hatching Twitter:  A True Store of Money, Power, Friendship and Betrayal.

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It was an interesting interview and it made me want to read the book.  Apparently, the creation and building of Twitter had been nothing less than chaotic (I mean, check out the subtitle).

The interviewer asked Bilton if he got full cooperation from the principal characters while writing the book, and Bilton made a comment that really got my attention.  He said that he went back and reviewed the four Twitter founders’ Facebook status updates, their Tweets, their posts to Flickr and to YouTube, and in many instances these didn’t match their memories.  He used their social media posts to help verify, clarify and, I would assume, prompt recall of events.

Ok, so I may late coming to this realization, but we are daily contributing to our biographies via social media.   With pictures.  And videos.  And often snarky one-liners.

Ignore that I am stupid and late to this game.  But I don’t think that my contributions to social media have been good enough to use in my biography (to any future biography writers out there).  I have always been cognizant of the “rules” of social media, the rules according to me.

  • Rule 1.  Assume that everything that you post could end up being seen by anyone in the world
  • Rule 2.  Assume that you can’t make everyone happy, but you shouldn’t try to piss everyone off
  • Rule 3.  Follow the advice of your mother–don’t talk politics or religion in someone else’s house
  • Rule 4.  Your mother has already seen you nude as a child, and she doesn’t want to see you that way as an adult (refer back to Rule 1)
  • Rule 5.  If you can’t say something nice about someone, don’t say anything at all.  (I don’t always follow this rule.)

When you follow these rules, your social media contributions are pretty bland.  And I’m pretty private, as well.

I think that I’m going to have to SPICE UP MY TWEETING!  Bam.  It’s on.  Cause I want it to be a good story.

(Should also have a good story….but that’s beside the point on social media, right?  It’s just about telling a good story, right?)