As time moves on, the count down to failed success and vice versa has become more apparent. Failure is inevitable and has become more of an expectation than a possibility. It all goes back to the start of my career and adult relationships, but has been on full blast the last year or two. Now before I continue, I should state the obvious. This blog has traditionally been heavily skate focused, though there has been some coverage of culture, music, art, etc. However, it has also been neglected. That is mostly due to a lot of skate focused things being posted through Naysayer and so much coverage all over, that why would anyone care what my take is on it? So moving forward, while I will still cover some things about skateboarding, this blog will also be a bit more personal. So be warned. You may not know me and thus not care, you may know me and still not care, but maybe you are a bit voyeuristic (as I would assume most are) and follow along out of pure curiosity. With that said, let the show begin.
Failure. Not succeeding. At least it implies going for it and trying, right? I definitely would admit that I put effort into anything I do. Some might say I put too much effort in and try too hard, but I try to give everything all I have. After graduating NYU and beginning my career in advertising, I immersed myself so much into it that I worked unnecessarily long hours for years, learning all that I could, and trying to advance my professional growth at the quickest rate possible. And with that I was successful. I was rewarded and validated. Things looked optimistic. However, for all the effort I put into my career, something even more important was not being properly cared for. At the time, I was simultaneously starting what would become my most long-term relationship to date. Things started off amazing and progressed well. After a year, we moved in together, we were in love, and were building a future together. However, I have a way of ruining things that were or could have been great (failure, this will be a reoccurring thing). As I focused on work, and made time to skate outside of that, she was left with my scraps. We had our ups and down, but as the years went on and my career advanced, our relationship suffered. I don’t know why she hung around for so long. I guess it comes down to love. She loved me, and I loved her. It was apparent. But as she always said: love is not enough. After 5 years, love really was not enough and we broke up. She did nothing wrong, she simply wanted more of my time and I remained selfish and refused to give it to her. I ruined what could have been a great thing.
Fast forward 6 months and I meet another girl. My life is very different, she is very different, and our situation is very different. I have more available time, but she lives 700 miles away. This time she is the busy one. Work, a band, hobbies, social life. Things were great, despite the distance. We communicated regularly. She visited me, I visited her. Things were looking up…but the roles ended up getting reversed, in a way. While there were strong feelings involved, we were not a couple and agreed to not set any expectations. This is where I fail again. As her times became less available, I grew antsy and demanded more of it than she could/cared to provide (sound familiar?). Instead of allowing things to be and accept them as they were I felt the need to confront her with things we agreed wouldn’t be issues. I had created expectation without her consent and made a natural, yet inconsistent thing into something serious and unnecessarily finite. So my knack for ruining thing had reach a new low of spoiling something that shouldn’t have even been spoilable. How about them apples?!
I guess I could segue into my fails in other aspects of my life. Like some bad career choices, lost friendships, an alienated family, and, most recently, somehow killing the firewire port on my MacBook (chill, even the small things count). But I will not delve any further into those things. I will just accept the fact that life is but a count down to failed success…and successful failure (vice versa)…for me. This is the thing. I am successful and good at certain things. In my career, I am a great marketer and know how to strategically engage an audience with an advertiser through media platforms. In skateboarding, I know how to work my niche and have built a brand with a ton of potential. I may not be the best skateboarder, but I go for it and find success in the failures I make. Those are the two things I have going for me. Despite all my failure, I have marketing and skateboarding, haha. Now to figure out how to not ruin great things with great girls…
No comments:
Post a Comment