Posted by Rio S.
Face it, you’re screwed. Your presentation (for the company’s biggest client, no less) was torn to smithereens; your report-slash-plan (that was supposed to be your company’s panacea to survive the recession) was a Hindenburg. Everything was peachy for a while and a split second later, everything’s ablaze and everybody’s running for the exits. You’ve kissed your raise – which was due three months ago – goodbye. Or if you’re a freelance writer like myself, your article was flamed to hell and back. Get my drift?
After failure of epic proportions, what’s the next step?
Take it with grace. Do not go into the light – at least, not just yet. You still have a job, unless of course the plodding creature that is your boss fired your ass on the spot. And no, keep that pointer finger down, looking for a scapegoat is not only cowardly; it’s also a vile, vile practice done by people with no backbones (i.e. single celled organisms like amoeba and your ex-boyfriend).
Sure, it’ll be raining shit on you for a while, but shit won’t kill you (though if you literally have sewage up to your forehead, you’re in real trouble). Failure is a better teacher than Success at any rate; it teaches the Don’ts and the Nevers and the Try Agains.
Take the flak (especially if you deserve it), and take it with grace. Believe me, they can’t throw as much flak at you than you can throw flak at yourself. You’ll be stronger and smarter for it.
FIXIT. Yap, instead of running screaming for the exits, you have braved the storm and now you have to fix it. Arguably, you can’t fix everything, as you are not the cosmos who has power over stuff like that. The cosmos has deemed that your editor can’t spell or compose a proper paragraph, and you can’t change that. That said, fix what you can fix.
First ask yourself, “What went wrong?” Was it the crappy LCD projector? Have it fixed. Was it that you weren’t discriminating enough in choosing your projects? Choose wisely next time. Was it that your research was lacking? Do intensive research next time, turn every stone, climb every mountain, ford every – wait.
Try again. If you’re looking to be more than your office’s resident zombie or your house’ resident sulky writer, you’ll have to try doing stuff again. Before attempting anything, you should try and at least broaden your skill set or maybe, check if you have learned some stuff from Failure.
It’s normal that you’re scared shitless, that if your hands don’t return to normal body temperature soon, you’d get frostbite. It’s normal, I tell you.
You might be wondering why this article is called Yuppie Experience when there is no experience recounted. I was just getting to that, as this particular experience is recent and still stings my massive ego. I was published in a magazine recently (my first stint in print publishing) and well, it was an epic failure. I got my copy last Thursday and was wondering where I could bury the magazine, only to find my brother reading it as soon as I open my eyes Saturday morning. My brother asks, “What’s ‘oftenly’?” I laugh to keep from crying and say as I light my first cigarette of the day, “I did not write that.”
My brother continues to flip through the magazine: So you wrote this story here? Why’d you choose this title?
Me: That’s not the title, actually. It should have been called “Ang Pagtakas.”
Then again, if you’re going to fail, might as well go out with a bang and make it EPIC. Then you can go as I did and write about it. My friend Chris (as of this writing, I have five friends named Chris) summed it up quite nicely: Keep the magazine. Ten years from now when you’re rich and famous, you can say, “These people ruined me, and now I shall have to buy them and shut their asses down.”
