Embracing Failure
Why I cancelled my Kickstarter project, and what I've learned about failure.
Today I made the decision to cancel a Kickstarter project. There are a lot of reasons the project wasn’t doing as well as I had hoped, but I’m not going to get into those here. The most important thing is that I had to accept that I had failed, and decide what to do next.
I’ve always been headstrong, and for much of my young life I was hesitant to ever admit that I was wrong. I have engaged in many, many shouting matches over pointless things, and died on many hills that were not worth dying on. It wasn’t until I embraced my failures that I started to see a path forward.
I’m no stranger to failure.
My life, like so many, could be described as a long series of failures. I have failed at many, many things that were important to me. Here’s a list of my greatest failure hits:
I failed as a freelance editor, and ended up in a dead-end job to make ends meet.
I failed as a first-year teacher and got fired.
I failed in my first marriage, which ended in divorce.
I failed to get accepted into grad school because of my low undergraduate GPA.
My first comic book series was a commercial failure, and resulted in my first failed Kickstarter, five years ago.
I failed to keep the weight off after I lost 100 pounds, and gained most of it back.
When I look at that list, I run through a gamut of emotions. Shame, regret, embarrassment. I could really wallow in those feelings if I felt like it (and trust me, I have), but there is so much more to the story than that.
Let me revisit the list above, but with more context:
I failed as a freelance editor, and ended up in a dead-end job to make ends meet.
When I started freelance editing I really felt that I could be an expert at something through sheer confidence and force of will. I was able to fake it with a handful of clients, but ultimately I learned the important lesson that being honest with yourself about what you are good at is critical to success.
I failed as a first-year teacher and got fired.
As a first year teacher, I was overwhelmed, overworked, and burnt out. I was trying to follow all the instructions and do what the other teachers and administrators around me were telling me to do, instead of embracing my own teaching style and way of working. Their way didn’t work for me, and crashing and burning at that school set me on the path to learning ways that DID work for me. I am still a teacher to this day and damnit, I do it MY way.
I failed in my first marriage, which ended in divorce.
I got married young, and moved across the country to Florida to be with my then-wife. We were great friends, but we were never meant to be married, and the process of learning that immutable fact was emotionally and physically draining. In the end we got through to the other side while saving our friendship, and as a consequence of living in Florida for four years I made other lifelong friends that I love and cherish.
I failed to get accepted into grad school because of my low undergraduate GPA.
When I moved back home after my divorce, I applied for grad school, looking for direction for the next phase of my life. I was rejected or waitlisted from every school, because my undergraduate GPA was just too low to compete. I learned that the choices I make have long-term consequences I won’t always foresee. It wasn’t all bad, of course. I didn’t apply to any schools in my hometown. If I had gotten into one of them and moved away, I would not have met my current wife, or gotten the stable and fulfilling job I have now held for four years.
My first comic book series was a commercial failure, and resulted in my first failed Kickstarter, five years ago.
When I started my comic book writing journey I was bright-eyed a bushy-tailed, and I wrote a comic book that was convoluted, long, and comprehensible only to me and my co-writer. The first couple of Kickstarter projects for the book succeeded purely on the strength of financial support from my friends and family, and then the third campaign failed miserably. I learned that comic books are a business like any other, and nothing will succeed just because I want it bad enough. That failure inspired me to try something different, which ended up being my most successful comic book to date: Unicorn: Vampire Hunter.
I failed to keep the weight off after I lost 100 pounds, and gained most of it back.
One of the greatest triumphs of my life was losing 100 pounds during the pandemic lockdowns. I achieved that weight loss through intense calorie tracking, journaling, and exercise. By the beginning of 2021 I was healthier than I had ever been and felt great, but like the contestants of The Biggest Loser, I was quickly on track to gain it all back. While I am not currently at my highest weight ever, I’m only about 35 pounds away from it. Life got in the way, and I stopped making my health a priority. I could write a whole novel about this, but for now I’ll say that I had to learn that earning something once isn’t enough. True success is about showing up again, and again, and again.
So what?
Learning to accept failure and grow from those failures has been absolutely critical to every success I can lay claim to today. Pretending that I have all the answers and that I’m not going to mess up again, and again, and again, is foolish. Failing is absolutely part of life, and I am under no illusion that I’ve moved past the “failure era” of my life. It’s still going strong.
The hardest part of failure is admitting you were wrong. Being right is fun - it feels good. It is easy to hold fast, and claim you were right, even when the evidence is flying in your face. Stubbornly refusing to admit defeat or fault is a surefire way to halt your own progress, and keep you stuck exactly where you are. Plus, it really makes you seem like a dick.
I can be wrong. In fact, I’m often wrong. I’ve been so wrong that it felt like my whole world was falling apart around me. At my worst moments, I refused to accept my wrongness and languished. At my best, I owned my failures, learned from them, and moved on to bigger and better things.
So if I have any advice, it’s this: embrace your failures. You’ll be glad you did.
-Caleb