Why are we still so uncomfortable talking about failure?

I get comfortable by sharing how I failed in 2022

Photo by the blowup on Unsplash

This week I subscribed to a new newsletter. Nothing too out of the ordinary there, I subscribe to a new find most weeks, but this was Elizabeth Day’s newsletter, Daylight. Longtime readers will be familiar with my love of her Podcast How to Fail and her brilliant writing. What it did make me think though was why, with all this discourse around failure, celebrities sharing their failures left and right, am I still conditioned not to share my own? Because, reader, I think I may have failed too.

On social media, there is a catalogue of failures. Each one is more relatable than the next, but here’s the thing, they are almost always in retrospect. Each story is an impressive failure and then an outcome, a life change, even more, profound and successful than the thing that failed. Why do we always wait for that lesson, that reason for the failure, or the great recovery before we feel confident enough to share it?

So here I share my top 3 failures of 2022 with you all. In hope that when I sit here writing this newsletter one year from now, I too will have the lesson, the change, and the reason. But for now, here they are, because if I can’t share them here, where can I?

My failure to make any money from my business…yet

A few months ago, I started The Curious Marketer to help others who, like me, have stepped away from the corporate world. Those, in search of more meaning, in both their lives and their work. The ambition is to support them as they bring their dream to life. But it’s been slow. I’ve put everything into it but am yet to reap the rewards. I’ve seen others do it so there’s proof of concept but it's taking longer than I expected. My goal was to bring in some revenue before the end of the year. But sadly that doesn’t look likely. All I can do is keep showing up, helping people, and hoping that will change.

My failure to network in both the virtual and real-world…yet

I’m still working on this one, but I’ve made a few attempts to network and some have been met with more success than others. Firstly I joined as a guest on a lovely online networking group but it just wasn’t for me. I wrote about this in my post The power of saying no. Then I decided to try my luck at an in-person event and managed to douse a fellow networker almost entirely in Prosecco, mortified! Networking always makes me feel incredibly awkward, I’m much better in smaller groups and with less pressure to meet as many contacts as possible and pretend to be someone I’m not. This is something I’m still working on and will no doubt feature in my 2023 goals.

My failure to pitch a story…yet

This one has a history. For a long time, I’ve wanted to be a writer. I’ve dabbled here and there with freelance writing gigs for the local paper and later online magazines. This ambition was shelved when working life became too consuming and it was only a year ago, on my career break, when I started to write again. This Substack is now 10 months old and I thank every one of you for your support, for reading these words and for helping me get my confidence back. It’s given me a place to figure out the big questions and it’s given me a place for my writing. 

You may have noticed the yet that follows each one of these. As Elizabeth Day says, “all failure is data collection”, so that’s what these are, data collection. Because in each failure I’ve learned something, I’m still learning and there is time to figure it all out.

• This week I’m reading What Writers Read – 25 Writers on their Favourite Book – edited by Pandora Sykes. As the nights draw in and the temptation to pick up a well-worn comfort read gets too strong to resist, this beautiful book shares some of the most well-known writer's favourite reads. 

• This week I’ve been listening to Jo Elvin talk about her failures on How to Fail with Elizabeth Day. Her number one failure was heartbreaking and has nothing to do with her long and successful career in magazines.