{"id":14207,"date":"2015-02-11T10:06:47","date_gmt":"2015-02-11T15:06:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/?p=14207"},"modified":"2026-03-26T09:59:50","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T13:59:50","slug":"olivias-blog-fail-fail-fail-spectacularly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/2015\/olivias-blog-fail-fail-fail-spectacularly\/","title":{"rendered":"To Fail, and Fail, and Fail…Spectacularly!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n To Fail, and Fail, and Fail…Spectacularly!\n <\/h1>\n \n \n <\/header>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

\u201cKeep your head down. Study. Write. Work, work, work. Get used to being alone. And don\u2019t ever say \u2018yes\u2019 to anything unless you are sure you can do it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I started university with a plan, you see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, okay. Now that I look back on it, maybe \u2018plan\u2019 isn\u2019t the right word. Because having a plan connotes intentionality, discipline, forethought, when, in fact, my strategy was mostly a reactionary response. It was what I was left with when I\u2019d eliminated all the other possibilities: joining clubs, meeting new people, \u201ctaking chances\u201d \u2013 all those extra-curriculars that university is typically associated with. I was having none of it. In my world of relentlessly predictable scheduling, trying new things \u2013 and possibly failing at them \u2013 didn\u2019t really factor in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was an airtight logic to my basic premise: the less I got involved with, the less chance there was of falling on my face. A pretty irrefutable claim, backed up by centuries of folk wisdom and rudimentary statistical analysis. But what I failed to consider were the slightly less common-sense claims that were hidden behind the first: the fewer chances I took, the more secure I would feel; the fewer people I engaged with, the more I\u2019d love the ones with whom I did engage; and the better I performed on something than everybody else, the more accepting of myself I would become.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nonetheless, for the first two-or-so years of my degree, I continued to move along with my fail-proof scheme, no happier than I\u2019d been at any other point in my life (and frequently unhappier), but unable to imagine any other kind of existence that I would be comfortable living. It\u2019s not that I wasn\u2019t enjoying my program: while I sat in the library transcribing Chaucer word-for-word, I was truly contented, in my own way. (No, really. I have a notebook that could probably be published as a really crappy modern English edition of Troilus and Criseyde<\/em>. Do they do joke editions of books? Because there should be a market out there for them)<\/em>. But when it came time to share my thoughts with other classmates, I froze up in their presence, my words failing spectacularly to convey even a modicum of what I\u2019d intended. And, in those weeks dedicated to preparing final essays, I felt as if there were a hailstorm blowing around inside my skull. My mind would hover over the same three sentences for hours on end, picking apart every detail until there was nothing left on the page but a blinking cursor. I had to ask for extensions on a couple of occasions simply because I couldn\u2019t accept what I had written as being good enough. Nothing was ever<\/em> good enough. I was a knotted mess of nerves. My \u201cplan\u201d wasn\u2019t working.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As my anxiety got worse, I did what I always do when I\u2019m looking for a little solace: I reached out to bookshelves. In tandem with recommendations from a therapist, I tracked down manuals, memoirs, and pop psychology books written about life with panic disorders. Some were marginally better than others, but they all seemed to amount to the same thing: I can\u2019t trust my head, and I can sometimes laugh about it, but mostly I just cry and then move on, until the next apocalyptic fear enters my brain. And the beat goes on, et cetera. In the end, this is probably the most honest advice I could receive (if it can even be called advice). But it wasn\u2019t what I was looking for. So, eventually, I just stopped looking. It wasn\u2019t until the middle of 2014, after years of what seemed like a Sisyphian effort to keep my synapses from short-circuiting, that I was handed the very book that I needed, at precisely the right time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, as you may have noticed from past blog posts, my mother is an exceptionally important figure in my life, and not just because she carried me around in her stomach for nine months. She is the one who introduced me to the joys of literature long before I was in school. She is the one who would read me fifteen bedtime stories in one sitting, who listened to me tell completely nonsensical stories about orphaned children and lost cats (I had a bit of a melancholic streak, clearly), and who taught me that a book could be there for me in ways that other people just couldn\u2019t \u2013 not even her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She\u2019s also the one who introduced me to the work of Marina Keegan, a young woman whose collection of short stories and essays The Opposite of Loneliness<\/em> was published last spring, nearly two years after she was killed in a tragic car accident. Keegan\u2019s death came just days after she graduated magna cum laude from Yale University, and mere weeks before she was to start her job as an editing assistant in the fiction department at The New Yorker<\/em>. The numerous pieces of writing that she left behind were compiled for publication by her English and Creative Writing professors, including the literary critic Harold Bloom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When my mother placed the book in my hands, my first thought was that it was a not-so-subtle comment on my hermit lifestyle. \u201cDarling,\u201d it seemed to say, \u201cYou really do<\/em> need to get out more.\u201d (And that should have been the first sign that I had misjudged, because my mother\u2019s speaking voice is decidedly unlike that of a character\u2019s from Downton Abbey<\/em>.) Nonetheless, deciding to give it the benefit of the doubt, I took the book home and began reading the title essay, which was the final article Keegan published in The Yale Daily News<\/em> before her graduation. In it, she addressed the ineffable sense of togetherness \u2013 the opposite of loneliness \u2013 that she feared she and her fellow graduates would lose shortly after walking across the stage to accept their diplomas. But, more importantly, she set out to dismantle the image of convocation as the symbolic beginning of a life-long plateau:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c We\u2019re so young. We\u2019re so young<\/em>. We\u2019re twenty-two years old. We have so much time. There\u2019s this sentiment I sometimes sense, creeping in our collective consciousness as we lie alone after a party, or pack up our books when we give in and go out \u2013 that it is somehow too late [. . . .] That it\u2019s too late now to BEGIN a beginning and we must settle for continuance, for commencement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat we have to remember is that we can still do anything. We can change our minds. We can start over. Get a post-bac or try writing for the first time. The notion that it\u2019s too late to do anything is comical. It\u2019s hilarious. We\u2019re graduating from college. We\u2019re so young. We can\u2019t, we MUST not lose this sense of possibility because in the end, it\u2019s all we have.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I read those short paragraphs, I felt like a steel belt had been unhooked from around my rib cage. It was a revelation, for me, to hear someone say begin<\/em>, to think that I have an almost interminable number of beginnings left inside me, and to know that all I have to do \u2013 all any of us lucky enough to be here, in this place, sitting in these classrooms, has to do \u2013 is say \u201cyes\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I say \u201call we have to do\u201d in full recognition that agreeing to take on new opportunities and challenges is a deceptively simple concept. Whether we\u2019re moving to another continent, going rock climbing for the first time, starting our post-grad careers, or submitting a poem to a writing competition, our self-preservational instincts are first in line to volley off all the reasons why it would be better if we just took a nap instead. And deciding to take a chance isn\u2019t always going to make us happy. We\u2019ll hit dead ends, find out we\u2019re dating the wrong people, fail to find meaning in the work that we\u2019re doing, and occasionally walk around in a \u201cgod is dead\u201d state of mind, biting our nails over global warming and flagrant human rights abuses and wondering where we got into our heads that we were uniquely gifted to do something about it<\/em>. But, in most cases, saying \u2018yes\u2019 isn\u2019t a contract or a solemn vow. It is simply a step that offers up a slightly better view of the countless directions a life can take.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This isn\u2019t meant to devolve into some empty platitude about living life to the fullest. I mean, let\u2019s be honest: no matter what Dead Poets\u2019 Society<\/em> taught us about \u201cliving in the moment,\u201d we won\u2019t stop waiting in obscenely long line-ups to get a cheap cup of coffee. We won\u2019t stop checking our phones when we\u2019re feeling lonely or isolated. We will still often prefer catching up on a favourite TV show to trying out some new activity with a bunch of people we\u2019ve never met. And we\u2019ll still spend a few more minutes on our morning rituals than is strictly necessary (especially in the bottomless depths of a Canadian winter). But what I\u2019ve only just started to grasp is that putting yourself out there and beginning<\/em> is, in fact, no more uncomfortable and disconcerting than sitting at home and staring at that punitive blinking cursor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I write this, I am still feeling the sting of a rejection letter I received a few hours ago, from a literary conference I applied to in November. I\u2019ve read over the attached comments several times now, and while I would love to say that my immediate reaction was something to the effect of \u201cOh, isn\u2019t this a great<\/em> learning experience, thank you very much,\u201d the truth is, I shut myself in my little office space and cried. I was absolutely devastated. I had put myself out there, I had said yes, only to receive a diplomatic but firm \u201cno.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But that is the very worst of it. A contingent, ephemeral, \u201ctry-better-next-time\u201d NO. And when you hear that, fellow members of this Endless Age of Anxiety, be proud and consider it a triumph: because you\u2019re still alive. And, as Marina herself wrote, you are still so young<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cKeep your head down. Study. Write. Work, work, work. Get used to being alone. And don\u2019t ever say \u2018yes\u2019 to anything unless you are sure you can do it.\u201d I started university with a plan, you see. Well, okay. Now that I look back on it, maybe \u2018plan\u2019 isn\u2019t the right word. Because having a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[26,27,29,25,849],"tags":[60],"class_list":["post-14207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-news","category-olivias-blog","category-student-blogs","category-student-voices","tag-olivias-blog"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14207"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53689,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14207\/revisions\/53689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}