Leisa Michelle

Nerdy Monologues of an Autodidact

A Good Ol’ “I Almost Died” Kind of Failure

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Spoiler alert: You’re most likely to experience failure when you try something new. I fell a lot over the weekend. I went left instead of right, backward instead of forward. I even almost died. Outlined below are the failures that came out of my first-ever ski trip…

…with an emphasis on the “almost-dying” part.

I went skiing for the first time last weekend in Spytkowice, Poland. I was super excited to not just try out skiing, but also to see the Polish countryside and not speak English. It was a great trip overall. I had a lot of fun, learned a lot of new Polish expressions, and made some new friends. I also almost had a run in with the Grim Reaper himself. For real.

You see, being from Florida, snow is new to me. The dynamics and physics of snow + skis was completely foreign. I couldn’t figure out how to control my movements. The instructor tried to help me, but well, I just couldn’t be helped. While my two other “first time skiing” friends (those bastards knew how to ski — I swear they must have had Olympic medals stuffed in their luggage…) drifted across the snow gracefully, I was trying my hardest to inch forward and not slide backward. I started to feel bad that I seemed to be holding everyone back. I tried to just mentally convince myself that I was an Olympic-grade skier, a pure-bred polar bear, Queen Elsa of Arendelle. But that only seemed to make it worse. Keep reading…

That Time I Got a C in Calculus

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Failure is often relative and subjective. What I see as a devastating shortcoming might not seem that devastating to you. And hidden somewhere in that truth, there’s something to be said about failure itself being all in our heads. But I’m not going to explore that today. Instead I’m going to talk about the time I got a C in calculus.

I grew up a typical, goody-two-shoes, butt-kissing, overachiever. I had straight A’s my whole life up until college. I aced all my tests, destroyed all my standardized exams, everything. And when I got to uni, overachieving got to be a bit tougher, but I still managed to do really well in my classes. With the exception of my calculus class, that is.

On my first calc test I got a 68%, which was really hard to come to terms with at first because the entire test was just a review of everything you should know before you start calculus.
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Lessons Learned from a Failed Relationship: Embracing Fear

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It costs so much to be a full human being that there are very few who have the enlightenment, or the courage, to pay the price…. One has to abandon altogether the search for security, and reach out to the risk of living with both arms. One has to embrace the world like a lover, and yet demand no easy return of love. One has to accept pain as a condition of existence. One has to court doubt and darkness as the cost of knowing. One needs a will stubborn in conflict, but apt always to the total acceptance of every consequence of living and dying.

-The Shoes of the Fisherman, Morris West

Welcoming rejection in my home

At the very start of this relationship, before I had even admitted my feelings for the guy I liked, I was gripped with a fear of rejection. I was afraid that he wouldn’t feel the same way. And I know I’m not special in this. Everyone feels this sort of anxiety when they realize they like someone. It’s often disorienting, stressful, makes you want to bury your head in the sand and hide there forever and ever. But after days of feeling literally sick to my stomach, I decided enough was enough. I sat down in a quiet room and welcomed rejection into my home. That’s right, I welcomed him in my home.

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Lessons Learned from a Failed Relationship: Intimacy

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My first “real” romantic relationship failed a few days ago. The split has been painful, and the mourning process has been interesting. The things that I feel now come in waves: anger, hurt, “I don’t need him,” loss, disappointment, heartbreak… And sometimes a wave of peace comes, followed by a moment of clarity. And in that moment of clarity, I’m able to look at the relationship as if I were at the top of a tower, looking down. Everything is distant. Everything appears to be objective and obvious. The emotions disappear. And what’s left is a lesson, a piece of wisdom that Failure drops off on my doorstep. That’s what I want to share in this series. I will be sharing each parcel that Failure has left for me.

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Fishing For Failure

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I’m standing in the middle of a vast, open field. Everywhere I look, in every direction, the whole 360 degrees, there’s nothing. Just nothing. The field just stretches on and on. I squint, desperately trying to spot something in the distance. A forest, a lake, a mountain, a stack of smoke, something to run towards, something to hope for. But I see nothing. I feel nothing. If I just knew which direction to go, if I could figure out which direction I truly want to go, then I might be able to make progress. I can get anything I want if I work hard enough. But what do I want? Where do I go? Gahhh!

I came up with this metaphor while leaving a voicemail for my older sister. This is how I feel when I try to think of what to do with my life. I don’t feel a pull in any direction, I don’t see any sparkling opportunities, and I have no idea what I want.

“I just want to be happy. I just want to be successful,” I said to her. And an hour or two later, she replied, “This might be terrible advice, but I think you should choose something knowing full well it might turn out to be not awesome. Forget about being successful. Just go out and fail. Yeah. Do it! Go out and fail!”

Forget about being successful? That’s crazy. That’s like saying forget about getting a good job. Forget about raking in six figures. Forget about getting a mortgage. Forget about starting a family while you’re young. Forget about all the arbitrary goals and stuff that stresses you out and just… live. Just live life. Huh. Maybe that’s not such crazy advice.

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