Failure

Failure is the demon that attacks the creative muse who would visit me, and I, a coward, what do I do? I sit back and let it happen. And when Creativity has been bludgeoned to a paste and torn asunder, Failure turns to me satisfied. There, it says. What did I tell you?  It reaffirms its own existence this way and only grows in power with each successful attack.

            Failure has been especially potent lately. It points out its presence in everything I’ve touched, and whatever I have not yet touched or have abandoned before it could begin, well that was Failure’s influence too. What I haven’t done is because I am incapable of doing it; what I have done is, ipso facto, only within my abilities, which, Failure reassures me, are inadequate.  Any moron can complete something, but that doesn’t mean she can achieve. Achievement is a slippery toad that ever changes its form and eels out of my grasp as soon as I think I may have touched it. And Failure, always ready to be of service, points out Achievement’s newest form for me, while also shouting in my ear that I will never be able to hold it. I know this is only Failure's desperate way of maintaining its supremacy, and yet I let it convince me. Believing in Failure makes me feel like more of a failure, and that’s just what it needs to feed on to grow stronger and more powerful. It is like a leech that convinces its host to let herself be sucked dry.  It rattles off for me all of my shortcomings, my squandered opportunities and all my wasted chances as evidence that I am indeed a failure. that I have always been a failure, and will always be a failure. It continues this way, building the case against my own worth until it has me crippled with doubt and fetal with fear and begging for mercy. Sometimes I am able to tamp its voice down, to tell it to knock it the fuck off, but other times it feels like the only thing that is true. Certainly the only truth that is real.  Even as I write this, Failure is piping up to insist that I am not even articulating its power and hold over me at all adequately. Because in addition to everything else, it is also very vain, you see  And yet, it doesn’t think I should write about it at all. In fact, it wants me to stop right now and erase this whole damn thing and certainly never post it because:

1)    It’s nothing that anybody wants to read (because it fails as an interesting/meaningful piece of writing)

              1a) not that I have very many readers anyway (because I am failing to 

                    develop my ‘social  platform’ as well as I should.)

2)    I ought to be embarrassed by it (and I am) because in writing it, I am only admitting what I already know is true, which is that I am a failure. Because people who aren’t failures don’t need to post stuff like this.

3)    I should be able to do better than this.  And it's true. I should. But it is also true that I haven’t been blogging as much as I was a month ago because I have begun of late to let Failure whisper in my ear, to let it convince me of my shortcomings as a writer/artist, which only serves to ensure the certainty of my failure as a writer/artist.

Failure thinks I should hold out for better ideas. It wants me to wait for that creative muse to come unwarily traipsing back into my life. Failure tells me it will play nice this time, but I know it will try to bludgeon the muse as soon as she is within striking distance. Because that is its favorite past time.   And so I will write this, and I may even post it. Because it is the only power I have against Failure. That is the real reason Failure doesn’t want me to continue writing this, or even to post it. Because just this little act of defiance stuns Failure enough to shut it up for a moment, and suddenly isn’t the only voice I am able to hear anymore.  Maybe in that quiet I will be able to hear Creativity calling. If I am lucky, Confidence might be somewhere near her too. They are weak right now, still suffering the wounds that Failure has inflicted, but I write this so that I can find them. So I can begin to nurse them back to health.