"My dear Lascelles," cried Drawlight, "what nonsense you talk! Upon my word, there is nothing in the world so easy to explain as failure - it is, after all, what every body does all the time."
from Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Susannah Clarke
p. 77
Several years ago, I slipped in to quite a long funk because I realized that I was, not to put too fine a point on it, a dismal failure. Perhaps not at the things that are most important, as father and husband. On the contrary, I think I am an exemplary father, and while my "husbanding" always needs work, our marriage remains strong as we head toward our seventeenth anniversary this May.
Yet, I was depressed precisely because I knew that I had not achieved any of the goals I had set myself. No by-line, no publication list, no nothing. All I had ever wanted to do was write. Like all writers, I practiced incessantly. I wrote a journal. I wrote poems. I wrote short-stories. I started a novel. I worried my way through various non-fiction essays, book-reviews, and longer-form pieces. Of course, there were the various papers I had written for graduate school, a good testing ground for developing both style and the insistent practice and habit of writing if ever there was one.
When I started doing this whole blogging thing - and Lord do I hate using that word, even though it is now in the subtitle of this site - I realized I finally had an outlet. Perhaps, a path to achieve what had eluded me up to this time. I realized pretty quickly that being one voice among millions wasn't exactly a path to recognition. So, the depression that was starting to lift settled back down.
It has only been the past year or so that I reached, more than peace of mind, but a sense of equanimity about it all. As the discussion at this post says quite explicitly, 90% of what exists out here in virtual land is crap, and someone who writes and presses that "publish" button as much as I do has certainly contributed much to that internet sewage reclamation pool. Yet, I am quite happy to have achieved what I consider the singular success of not really caring anymore. I do what I do not to achieve some goal. I do not write for my work to be noticed. I do this thing everyday (or nearly so) because I love it. I write what interests me to the best of my ability (typos, grammatical mistakes, and all), and have become acquainted with more than a few people that, had I not continued to do so, I never would have come to know. I would not continue to learn how much good stuff there is out there to read, to which to listen. I would not be constantly pushed to think and think again what it is I believe and why.
When I read Leon Wieseltier's recent lament that writer's just aren't paid enough - some aren't paid at all! - all I could think is, well, I haven't received one red cent for what I've been doing for over three years now. Perhaps most of it hasn't merited pay. That's OK, you see, because even if I were to suddenly land some kind of deal that paid me to do what I do and live as comfortably as I do now (and while we aren't even close to being rich beyond anyone's dream of avarice, we have at least achieved that weird American goal of providing for our children a far more comfortable existence than the ones we had growing up), it wouldn't matter as much as the simple fact that, for the past three and a half years, I've been doing what I do because I love it. I hope I have said something important a time or two; I hope I have provoked thought, whether that thought was twinged with sadness at my imbecility, or anger at my ideology, or humor at my insipidness, if I have done that on rare occasions, so much the better.
So, I continue to be a happy failure. And no one can take that away from me.
UPDATE: In the interest of fairness and honesty, here's a contrarian point-of-view (h/t HASTAC).
