While I prepare for a New Year, I’ve taken a break from sharing new stories. Instead, I’m dipping into my archives and sharing past posts that have been pushed down into my blog’s abyss.

This ten-day period is almost a whisper in my mind now. I’m glad I had the sense of mind to capture these few moments; if only for the those last few lines. 

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On the Thursday, I walked into the Irish and was faced with two particularly awful sights. One, I came face-to-face with the object of my unrequited affection out on a date with another woman. Two, I came face-to-face with the newer man; who after I had decided to take a risk and text him, had remained inexplicably but predictably silent.

On the Saturday, I walked into a church and watched a couple I barely know tie a knot in forever.

On the Monday, I walked into therapy and spewed such hatred for the human race–particularly for the male subset of our species–that my therapist was left speechless.

On the Tuesday, I slumped into an emergency room and doctors admitted me overnight for a Crohn’s related infection.

On the Thursday, I walked into The Store to unload brand new pieces of art for the Christmas season.

Today, I walked into a church and watched as my nephew was baptized.

In the last ten days, I feel I experienced the full breadth of a life. And this is what I observed:

It is beautiful and it is cruel.

 In its beauty we learn to pause. And in its cruelty we learn to move.

A few weeks ago, my brother-in-law’s brother came to Greece from England to run the classic Athens Marathon. He’d been training for a few months and the night before he was calmer than I was. I was not the one who was  going to get up at the crack of dawn and run 42 kilometers in the cold and rain, yet I was jittery for him.

“Are you nervous?” I asked.

“Nope.” he replied and leaned back into the chair with his trademark relaxed grin.

Two hours after he’d finished the marathon, we all gathered for a hearty lunch at home.

“How do you feel?” I asked.

“Good.” he said and leaned back into his chair as if he’d spent a day at the beach instead.

When I told Pinelopi that I found his whole presence inspirational, she asked for clarification.

“You want to run a marathon?”

“No, I really don’t. But I could do a 5K, couldn’t I?”

“Do you want to do that?”

“Maybe? I don’t know. He just made it look so do-able.”

I’ve been thinking about inspiration since then. I’ve also been thinking about change. In the last year, I’ve tried to complete the Couch to 5K programme three times. And every time, I stop on the third week. I’ve started again this week with the same determination as before, but this time I’m wary.

During the third 90 second run on today’s workout, I couldn’t help but think: “Why even bother again? You’ve never stuck to anything, let alone exercise. What makes you think you’re going to change now?”

There are all these kinds of people I’ve wanted to be in my life. I’ve wanted to be The Person Who Journals, The Social Butterfly, The Hostess with The Mostest, The Whimsical Crafter, The Marathon Runner, The Dancer (well, the Person Who Has Some Sense of Rhythm), The Business Woman, The Designer, The Master Chef, The Photographer.

Now, I find myself in an uncomfortable position. I’ve accepted who I am but at the same time I want to do things that require me to be something that I’ve never been.

I’m not organized, I’m not particularly disciplined and I’m not good at sticking to a schedule. Can I change these things?

When I get frustrated with my mother for doing an idiosyncratic mother thing, my sister tells me:

“Honey, she’s in her 70s. You have to accept that she’s done changing.”

So, how much can we really change in our lifetimes? And when we do stop trying? Do we ever stop trying? Or do we just learn the best way to work within our limitations? 

‘Cause I’m stumped.

On most mornings, I don’t want to wake up because in my dreams I’m over the top successful. Take this morning, for example, my eyes opened because my phone was vibrating on the pillow next to me. I groaned, “Uh-uh” which meant “No, I don’t want to be awake. Go away light! Go away day! Go away person on the telephone!”

I was dreaming that a man -who was a cross between Ryan Gosling and Jesse Eisenberg- was secretly in love with me. But I was too busy promoting my fifth novel and living in my house that looked like it came straight out of the online pages of those New York lofts I see on Apartment Therapy to notice. I woke up at the crucial moment where he was about to kiss me.

After I answered the phone, I tried to go back to sleep, but the reality of the morning and all the things lacking, prevented me. Instead, I lay in bed thinking about failure.

A few weeks ago, Linda from Curious Notions had recapped some of the talks she heard at a We Are Girls Conference. In her post, she had included an interesting  list of the ten ways we can empower girls.

One of them was: “Let your children see you fail. It teaches them to take risks.”

At first glance, it felt counter-intuitive. At second thought, in my grumpy morning mood, it felt disingenuous. Surely watching people succeed inspires children to take risks?  Failure is the worst. 

I thought of the people that are regarded as inspirational figures, the ones we quote:  Nelson Mandela, Steve Jobs and J.K Rowling. I didn’t watch any of these people fail because they only become inspirational once they’d already succeeded. Learning that they had once failed does inspire me, I guess, but the impact their past failures have on my day-to-day productivity is minuscule.

But then I thought of Conan O’Brien who was already hugely successful by most standards when he suffered a very public failure. Watching him come back from that and change his own expectations of success was very inspirational.  I reached the very obvious conclusion that it’s not failure alone that inspires others to take risks, it’s the way that people react to failure that makes them inspirational.

So I started to list my failures. Could admitting these failures to myself inspire me to get out of bed, motivate me to do something more with my day than I would ordinarily? I began…

Things I’ve Failed At

1. My writing has been rejected from three different publications.

2. Over the last four years, I’ve consistently failed to get on a plane again.

3. I failed plenty of math tests in high school.

4. Romantic relationships? EPIC FAIL.

5. I was not accepted into five universities for my undergraduate degree and I was rejected from two universities for my postgraduate degree.

6. This venture failed.

But then I couldn’t come up with any more. Six, I thought? Six? THAT’S IT? There is no way I’ve only suffered six failures in my life. I searched and searched and searched for more, reaching far into my mind but I couldn’t find any others.

If I haven’t racked up a laundry list of failures by now, it means that I haven’t risked enough times. (I also made a list of all the things I wanted to do but never did and all the things I started doing, but never finished. That list was almost three pages long.)

It turns out my biggest failure has been failure to fail.

I’ll be honest. I didn’t leap frog out of bed upon this realization. Instead, I lay there for awhile feeling sorry for myself. Geez, you can’t even succeed at failing? What is wrong with you? 

That’s when my stubborn nature finally kicked in. Screw this, I said out loud to myself, I can fail in a lot of ways, but I’m not going to fail at this. That’s a line I refuse to cross. Now get up, woman, and fail at something other than failure.

Are YOU inspired by failure? Do you think you’ve failed enough in your life?

Original image from here.