Failure-Smailure!

"A failure a day is success on the way!"
- Lin Neiswender



I came up with this meaningful quote yesterday, in a discussion about Redefining Failure at Coach Creative Space. Nick pointed out the vital necessity of frequent failures on the path to success, and that we should be seeking out failures, not running away from them, as they are getting us closer to our goals. That struck me as so profound, and whammo, the quote was born. Thank you for that Nick, and Dan for establishing the discussion.

I used the motivation from the quote to do my first collage - shown above - for an artists' collage group called Collage Play (info about it here) that I just joined. I was nervous about my virgin effort- what if it was awful? What if my style was nothing like anyone else's? In short, what if I sucked at this? But I did it anyway, printing off things I had made that I thought would go together with the required elements, changing some of the graphics, scaling them and altering the colors, playing.

And a funny thing happened. I started getting excited about the process, and started having fun. Isn't that what creativity is all about, the process? The fun? So even if the end product had been ugly, it still would have been OK. I would have had great pleasure making it. The piece is called the Queen of the Meadowlark Palace. And, paradoxically, I don't think it is ugly. Whew!

Well, got to go get busy now and seek out some new failures. Success is calling my name!