On Revisiting My Failures

Somehow, I turned 55 this year.

Not that it should come as a surprise, after-all, I was 54 years old last year.

And, no, this isn’t one of those “Oh lord, I’ve done got old” things either. 

I have always pretty much ignored my birthday.  I’ve always figured that if there were any congratulations to be doing, or gifts to be giving, that should all be directed at my mom.  After-all, I had absolutely nothing to do with being born, or surviving childhood either (and neither did my brothers for that matter).

Some few years ago, after my “old dog” beard had gone mostly gray, a co-worker suggested that I should shave my beard because “it makes you look older”.  I said to him then, and I repeat to you all now; “There are plenty of people who wouldn’t have given odds I’d live long enough to have gray hair, so I think I’ll keep it a while and wear it with pride”. 

I got no problem with being older than I once was.

But somehow, turning 55 has provided me with a new willingness; a willingness to face my failures, and to wrestle with them yet again, to dedicate time and energy, sweat and tears, hope and dreams once more to those things that have eluded me to this point.

And trust me it’s not that there aren’t plenty of new things to fail at.  The world may revolve at basically the same speed it has for all of my life, but my world is evolving ever faster.  Faced with what will most likely be the last 20 years of my life I can see plenty of complications rushing headlong at me.

But, there are those past failures lying in the road behind me; failures that, as I get older, seem to mean more to me, things that I willingly walked away from, out of embarrassment, or frustration, or lack of interest, things that make me less than I could be.

Now in truth, there is little I can do about some of them. 

Like relationships.  Most of those are perhaps best left as they are.  Like my first love.  We were together for years.  Everyone was certain we would marry.  She utterly destroyed me when she told me she didn’t love me anymore. 

She wanted to be friends. 

I didn’t know how. 

I am not sure I do now.  I couldn’t talk to her, or look at her, or think about her without grieving for the life that I had lost when she came to that decision.  Years later, I couldn’t talk with her, or look at her, without grieving.  I’m not sure I could now.  I’m not sure I even have a right to try.

So, maybe I need to start smaller, get some practice at recovering from my failures, before I tackle the big interpersonal stuff.  And perhaps in the practice, I will use up enough time and energy that I don’t go do something foolish.  All I know is that I am drawn ever more strongly to the things I failed at as a boy and young man.

There are other, less spectacular failures in my past, things that don’t have the potential to disrupt other’s lives, and so, things that I feel free to tackle.  Things like;

Writing. 

God, how I hated writing as a kid.  I always wrote my book reports the night before they were due.  Never mind that I had the book completely read the first day it was assigned.  The writing waited.  I hated it.

But as I have gotten older, I have learned that it wasn’t the writing that I hated.  I actually enjoy crafting words into ideas, and ideas into stories.  What I hated back then was the actual “putting words on paper” part. 

What I have come to realize is that in the day of pen and ink, the day of typewriters, in order to change a single word, you had to rewrite (retype) the entire paper.  Something that I was loath to do.

Now, at 55 I have written 60 odd short stories, close to 200 poems, and a couple dozen opinion pieces.  I’ve even been published in collected works a couple times.  And I write 3 internet blogs that have been read by several thousand people in dozens of countries around the world.

And I find it relaxing.

Drawing and painting

With full apologies to Mrs Y from seventh grade who I know gave it her best effort.  I have never been able to draw an apple, a tree, or a person that even remotely looked like anything other than a smudge on what had once been a perfectly useful piece of paper so full of potential.

But sometime back, I was drawn (forgive the pun) into understanding why I couldn’t reproduce what my eyes saw.  I gave it a great deal of thought, and I came to realize that there was a perspective problem that I had.  That when I look at objects, I see the light reflecting off of them and the colors.  But it is the dark that needs to be reproduced on paper.

So I started to train myself to see the dark, the black, and the dingy.  Once I understood that, the first drawing I attempted was a bust of a person.  And while some might argue that it bears only passing resemblance to the actual model used, none have any doubt that it is clearly an animate human that was captured on the page.    

I have recently picked up oils, and brushes, and pencils, and an easel at garage sales.  I have set myself a goal to make 100 sketches in the next 100 days, and am actually several straight days into that process.  At the end of my 100 sketches, I will set a goal on oils as well.  I have 35 boards that I picked up at a flea market, prepared for painting, 11 x 16, so I will do at least that many oils, whether any are fit to hang or not.

Music

I often have told the story that when I was a boy I tried to learn to play the cello for 6 months I struggled with music, and finger position, and holding the bow.  Then failing with the cello, I switched to the trumpet, and struggled with music, and finger position, and tightness of lips, and breath control.  And failing that, I switched to the violin, then tuba, then viola, and finally trombone. 

Finally, after assaulting the ears of countless music teachers and fellow students, it became apparent to me that it wasn’t the instruments’ fault.

But inside, all my life I have harbored a fantasy that I could make music, that I could learn to play, something.  I surrounded myself with friends who were musically inclined; string players, piano players, and singers.

And for some inexplicable reason, the one thing that has stayed with me all of my life has been the belief that “if only I had tried the banjo”.  Why the banjo?  I can’t for the life of me tell you, but there it is.

And even though the only way I can carry a tune is in my pocket on an MP3 player, and that I have no ear for time, tempo, and notes.  I recently bought a used banjo.  And as soon as I get through my sketches, and my oils, I am going to sit down, in a field far, far away from all unsuspecting humans, and I am going to assault the ears of the animals and insects.

Repeatedly.

Until I can at the very least play by rote some small selection of sounds that are pleasing to my ear, if no one else’s.

I have come to understand, that as time passes, my experiences, both good and bad, accumulate, and my skills and perspective change.  And those altered skills and perspectives oft times make just enough difference to allow me to accomplish what confounded me before. 

There is peace, and assurance to be gained in those accomplishments.

For in so doing, faith in the potential is renewed. 

The potential that lies in me, the potential that lies in you, the potential that lies in all mankind.

So, my message to you; “Reward yourself, go back to your previous failure(s), take your current skills, and challenge your life with new accomplishments”.

You will be infinitely richer for the effort.

© Copyright 2013, Marty Vandermolen, All Rights Reserved