Well today on my journey of re-wiring my brain and feeling the fear but doing it anyway I attempted to join a rather selective Arts Network. I always find these things awkward and I don’t really like the idea of them; after all art is subjective so someone judging me and something that is very personal to me as being worthy or not is something I find very hard to deal with; especially as it is something which I am so passionate about and especially as I am feeling so fragile (though I hate that word) at the moment.
Anyhow as the book by Susan Jeffers suggests this is what I am aiming to do. To be aware that some things may make me feel uncomfortable, but by doing them I will feel better in the long run and I hope that one day my fragile ego will accept that it is worth doing these things, even if I fail because it is the failures that lead to the successes. We all know the tale of Abraham Lincoln, if you don’t here it is:
As a young man, Abraham Lincoln went to war a captain and returned a private. Afterwards, he was a failure as a businessman. As a lawyer in Springfield, he was too impractical and temperamental to be a success. He turned to politics and was defeated in his first try for the legislature, again defeated in his first attempt to be nominated for congress, defeated in his application to be commissioner of the General Land Office, defeated in the senatorial election of 1854, defeated in his efforts for the vice-presidency in 1856, and defeated in the senatorial election of 1858. At about that time, he wrote in a letter to a friend, “I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on the earth.”
(http://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/OnFailingG.html)
Anyhow there are countless stories out there including ones about Churchill, Einstein, Edison and Darwin. The two things synonymous with all of them is that (a) they were all considered failures at some point in their life and (b) they all went on to succeed in ways that changed the world.
Now I am by no means saying that I will change the world (though believe me I would love to); all I am saying is this. If we continue despite our losses and then have our successes. Are we not more deserving and also, does it not make our achievement that much more remarkable. It is easy to deal with workloads when you are succeeding, it is harder to keep going when you are not; but by keeping going we are learning and growing and all the more likely to succeed in the long run.
So I spent 6 hours on the massive application today (yes it really is that big) and I am well aware that I will probably be rejected (though it makes me very sad to say that) but at least I have done it, and if I am not allowed to join then doesn’t it make any success I have in the future all the more sweet and a metaphorical two finger salute to those who didn’t want me!
