Fail Forward

Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever.
-Lance Armstrong

Missed that job. Missed a week of posts (right after a big link, no less). Missed a night at the gym due to several meetings, and I didn’t make it in to work today because my car didn’t start.

Because of how recent my loan was and how a deal I got, refinancing is a pretty bad option, financially. That means I’ll probably have to get my ex-wife’s signature in order to sell the house, and it means I need to dig up the dissolution agreement and possibly get a lawyer. That’s a miss.

Got locked out of my bank account thanks to a password typo, and they were closed until the following Tuesday thanks to a bank error, which kept me from filing my tax paperwork while I happened to be near my accountant, which kept me from filing it at all until the following week. Oy.

Anyway – I’m back in the saddle and I’m better off for all of those things.

Missing the job taught me about what shows up on a background check and what I can expect employers to say.

Missing a week of posts taught me how quickly these things build up, and gives me a reason to get invested right now and catch up.

Missing the gym night made me realize I’ll need to rework my usual work schedule and set expectations so I can get out the door on time every night.

I bought one of those backup batteries for my car, so a dead battery won’t stop me again.

I was never going to be able to refinance productively – finding that out lets me get started on the other possibly time-consuming aspects of selling the house.

And, finally, the last one taught me to save and store file copies in safe places so you can’t get locked away from them by a stupid accident.

When you fail, learn your lesson, change your plan if you need to, and take the next step as if nothing had happened. In this way, you cannot help but succeed eventually.