I begin (after all, it is the beginning) by asking, when did the word failure turn into FAIL? In my day, we used failure to describe both the act and its actor; we applied it to the actor if the failings were habitual. (Today the noun failing has a different and euphemistic sense: we use failing to describe not an event but a personal shortcoming. One of my failings is a lack of inhibition for writing long parentheticals. Sorry.)
But the topic of this blog is my own epic fail, or failure, if you prefer. You may recall that I recently rented a studio in the River Arts District of Asheville, the better to do art with, or so I supposed. Well, my first project was a bomb. I didn’t even finish it. First, it looked like some pastel-crazed graphic from a 1976 episode of “The Price is Right.” Second, the design involved far too much fine detail for my sixty-year-old eyes, and I didn’t pull it off. Third, in spite of the hours I spent planning and designing, I never built a prototype on my computer to see what the finished product might look like. Instead, I figured I would just make it work. That didn’t happen.
I brought the incompleted work home to let it cool overnight and give me a chance to look at it with fresh eyes, in the morning. But it was just as bad the next day. An epic fail.
I could be disheartened by this. (OK, I am somewhat disheartened. But I could be more disheartened. I could not only have been disheartened but disemboweled. Luckily for all, I did not undergo that.*) Instead, I have moved on. I’ve ordered some canvas and I am thinking about the design for a geometric abstract involving my favorite colors, pale yellow and light gray. Life is good. Fail is for failures and perfectionists. I aspire to be neither.
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Let’s talk about Pothole Forgiveness Time (PFT). PFT comes into play whenever you are behind the wheel, you drive into a rut or pothole, and all the passengers experience a jolt. When a passenger experiences a jolt, someone is to blame, but the time from blame to forgiveness (PFT) varies, depending on where one sits in the vehicle.
If you are the driver, you will forgive yourself for hitting the pothole in one or two seconds. OK, you think, I hit that pothole but we’re all past that now and there’s a lot of road ahead. I’m at the wheel. Let’s keep driving.
If you are one of the back-seat passengers, you forgive the driver in five seconds or so — you have put your faith in the driver to transport you to the destination and you are not in a position of control. You just raise your eyebrows at the bump in the road, look back and hang on. After a while, you have forgotten about that pothole.
But if you are the front-seat passenger, the intensity of the jolt is fifteen times that felt by the driver and the back-seat passengers. Your PFT is measured in minutes, if not tens of minutes. You think, I could have avoided that pothole! I can’t believe he didn’t see it! Who is this person, anyway, sitting in the driver’s seat — I can do better than he’s doing, why should I trust him?
Husbands and wives experiencing PFT lasting more than thirty minutes are advised to leave the vehicle immediately and go directly to bed, where such infractions may be put into proper perspective.