Down the Rabbit Hole

jump

Feeling a bit like Alice today.

'Would you tell me, please which way I ought to go from here?'

'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.

'I don't much care where -' said Alice

'Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat

'But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.

'Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: 'we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.'

'How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.

'You must be,' said the Cat, 'or you wouldn't have come here.'

                            Lewis Carroll - "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"

Failure is an Option

heights

"Failure" is my new favorite word.

Now before my mother can say, "Moira, don't be so negative." let me explain.

Being successful is the American way. The story we are told as children is to work hard, follow a good plan and you will have success.

So, as we get older we do this by going to college or learning a trade or getting married, etc.. 

We quickly learn that these things do not always end in success. This makes some of us a little more hesitant about the next plan we lay out for ourselves. 

We want that success.  

Time marches on and those of us who are afraid of failure get safer and safer in our choices while continuing to lower our self esteem and our expectations in the quest for contentment.

Yoda's famous quote, "Do. Or do not. There is no try." will lead many to "do not".

I stumbled upon a web show called, "The Failure Club", produced by Morgan Spurlock and created by Philip Kiracofe. I've always liked Morgan so I gave the first episode a try. I was hooked into the whole concept right away.

Here is a quote from the website, that explains the basics of Failure Club.

"In Failure Club, members learn to defy the fears associated with ‘failure’ by pursuing seemingly impossible goals that they set for themselves. From the outset, failure is not only a highly probable outcome, it is the desired outcome. Only through embracing the reality of failure can its’ societal stigmas be stripped away and replaced with an inspirational alternative."

So, I have developed my own failure club up here in the art studio. Party of one.

I am working very hard at failing, even harder than when I was working at succeeding.

I am aware that all I have done is changed a few words around. 

Fear is the really the big motivator when it comes to "Do. Or do not". I know that.

Take fear of failure off the table though and my path seems a little less ominous.

May the force be with you.

green

Three of my earliest memories have to do with cake. 

I remember my little sister's one-year-old birthday cake was a beautiful gingerbread house made by my dad's cousin.  "Those Christmas babies don't have it so bad.", I remember thinking.

A couple months later we had cupcakes for my birthday. There were little, plastic, Mickey Mouse characters on top of each one. It was fun to play with something that I had just licked, behavior usually discouraged.

About a week after that we were going to a friend's seventh birthday party. My mother had made a complicated sailboat cake. It was the kind that required cutting a sheet cake into various geometric shapes and then rearranging them like tangrams to look like a sailboat.  It was lovely. There was a number seven frosted on to one of the buttercream sails to make it look like a racing boat.

As my mother was carefully placing the cake into the holder I exclaimed, "Wow! You never make cakes that fancy for your own kid's birthdays".

I meant to let her know that I was impressed, but I could tell by the look on her face that I had said the wrong thing.

She calmly put the lid on the cake holder and said, "He doesn't have a mother to make a birthday cake for him" and we joined the rest of the family in the car to leave for the party.  There was no further discussion on the subject.

At four years old I didn't understand the gravity of the situation. 

I did realize, as I do today that I was lucky to have a mom that could make a cake like that even if it wasn't for my birthday.