“Why do we fall, Master Wayne? So that we may get back up.” Possibly the best line in the Christopher Nolan trilogy of Batman films. Yes, I’m a big comic geek and we’ll talk about that much more. Today I want to use that as a starting point for my reflection. Tomorrow is Veterans Day, but it is being celebrated today. I could write many different posts related to this holiday, but this too is something that we will talk about much more.
Today I am writing about the convergence of the two ideas above. Today I want to talk about one of my own failings, one that has led me here to this blog. I had made up my mind yesterday to write this post, and through a twist of irony I read this morning Seneca’s 28th letter to Lucilius. In each of his 124 letters to Lucilius, Seneca ends with a piece of advice to the younger man. In letter 28 Seneca offers a quote from Epicurus “A consciousness of wrongdoing is the first step to salvation.” If we are unable or unwilling to see our own faults we will never improve ourselves. With that, I present one of my failings and how I am trying to make it right.
Last year I bit off more than I could chew and tried to start a non-profit called Band of Bards. The goal was to to collect oral histories from fellow veterans and turn them into graphic novels that would be published online. This was an effort to preserve some bottom-up style history and to help bridge that civil/military gap by making many more stories much more accessible (and entertaining). I brought in two friends and started forming an advisory board. We had a good plan that identified and addressed weaknesses of talent as best we could. This was still a really big undertaking. Anyone who never thought of what goes into making comics or graphic novels would be blown away by the amount of labor involved. Undeterred we pressed on. Until it came time to file paperwork to register our business with the state of New York.
The packet was not terribly difficult to put together, but it went off into the mail (no online option) and nothing ever came back. Now, it’s typical for a response to take up to 90 days. So I waited impatiently, wondering if the state ever got what was sent out. Eventually I fell into a bout of depression. I started doubting myself, chastising myself for being overconfident and thinking I’m smarter than I am. “You can sure talk a big game, Tim, but when the rubber meets the road you suck!” I felt I had let down my two friends, as the administrative side of this venture fell to me. My anxieties got the better of me and the wheels fell off. Depression and anger derailed what I was trying to build and put a strain on two friendships that I valued. I felt embarrassed that I had made such a big deal of this effort, had started a Facebook page and even got my alma mater’s alumni magazine to publish a blurb about it in the ‘what everyone’s up to’ section.
Failure. Big time failure. It could be my most spectacular failure for the simple fact that it was so out in the open. I kind of just ignored it and didn’t want to talk about it. I tried to forget it, but Facebook likes to remind me now and then that I haven’t published anything on the Band of Bards page. Squarespace recently sent me an email notification about the auto renewal of the domain name. I could have canceled that, but I didn’t. Something about that seemed like absolutely giving up.
So I fell down and stayed down for a while. Now, it’s time to get back up. Band of Bards might be too much for now, but I can start with something more manageable like this blog. Owning the domain name allows me to keep it in the background and possibly go back and try again. For now I will put effort into this blog. If you’ve read the About section here you know that the end goal is to write a book. Gradual, incremental, manageable steps. Stand back up, dust yourself off, see what your faults were, and then correct them. Rick James said that cocaine is a hell of a drug. I think redemption is a hell of a drug. Building victory from the ashes of our failure and proving, most of all, to ourselves that we are good enough is a beautiful thing.
So friends, take time to reflect on some failure. Small or big, we can always improve something. All those small fixes add up. That’s what I am doing here. Many small fixes and improvements to build something large.
Thanks for stopping by. Happy Veterans Day (I’ll post more on that tomorrow).
Pax et bonum
Poptarts and a Pistol 