Writing about failure for #GLAMBlogClub

Failure can be a way of learning. It can also be uncomfortable, disconcerting, at times distressing or even very traumatic. It can depend on the scale of the failure. I think there are different kinds of failure, including failure you can learn from, and failure which has catastrophic consequences (and these are not the only kinds of failure, there are more including failure which is out of your control).  You can learn from the second kind of failure but there are usually really bad things happening along the way (for example think of how the COVID-19 pandemic is happening differently in each country, state and territory, how the climate crisis is not being dealt with and in relation to systemic racism and injustice towards Indigenous people, as well as the experience of other systemic racism - and comments about this). There are many more examples I could provide for failure with catastrophic outcomes and these broader failures have an impact. In our work places (galleries, libraries, archives, museums and records repositories) it is mostly the failure you can learn from, but the fire in the National Museum of Brazil is of the catastrophic kind (see also Blue Shield for their work or disaster prevention). 

Have a look at this earlier post I wrote about failure (and yes I know that at least one of the people I quote is contentious).

I also think we can shy from talking about failure, and I find this unhelpful.  I think it is better to go 'that could have worked better' (which can be a way of describing failure without resorting to a 'woe is me' approach), and see what can be done better next time, rather than pretending every thing is fine.  We can do better with our collections (this looks a helpful session to participate in) and services (think about who is invisible in your library, and this US information from 2015 may be helpful).  We can make these changes because otherwise we continue to fail at least some parts of our communities.

Enjoy failure - kind of...

I never thought I would write a post with this heading, but that was because I was not thinking about failure the right way.

Several months ago I realised that I tweet about it being okay to talk about failure, but realised I don’t often talk about my failures, and realistically they happen every day.  People around me know this, just as I know their failures.   

JK Rowling puts it really well, (and here is the complete text of the talk) and you can watch the video below

Wil Wheaton has some impressive things to say about failure too, and Scott Higgins is also helpful.

In a recent talk Neil Gaiman said "When the rules are gone you can make up your own rules. You can fail, you can fail more interestingly, you can try things, and you can succeed in ways nobody would have thought of, because you're pushing through a door marked no entrance, you're walking in through it. You can do all of that stuff but you just have to become a dandelion, be wiling for things to fail, throw things out there, try things, and see what sticks. That was the thrust of my speech," 

You could stop reading and watching here. 

I am talking about failure now, as part of my learning about it, but also to make it easier for other people to talk about too.  Sounds a bit like I am talking about an addiction, but rather I think the addiction is not talking about failure, and about not admitting to failure, and about not admitting that we all fail, often. Failure is not always something enjoyable to live through, but on the other hand it can be liberating.  

You can fail and still do amazing things, and you can do amazing things because you fail at what you set out to do, provided you have the right attitude.  I still delivered on a lot in Timor Leste and in some unexpected areas there, however, there were other ways I failed.  Once I realised I was going to fail, and I have to admit there were a few crunch moments about this (it was not pleasant), a different part of my brain clicked in as I sought to problem solve my way through this.  This was really exciting, and it meant I was actually thinking differently, I really could also feel it happening in my brain.  Part of this was thinking more creatively, there was more desperation in my thinking and that helped too.

I am also not saying I fail because I am a perfectionist.  I am not a perfectionist and I think perfectionism is close to evil.  I think one should strive for excellence, but perfectionism is dangerous and destroys many great and amazing things, and can really stop people thinking creatively.  

We don't have to be happy about failure, but choosing to deny failure happens is ignoring the important point J K Rowling made, and to quote her:

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.

...from the ashes of disaster grow the roses of sucess

Failure as a learning experience, and failure as a critical growth agent (ashes feeding the roses) I have been doing a lot of thinking about failure lately, and this song is helping my thinking. Influences come from a lot of places. Watch for future posts about failure.