Sinister: My love affair with failure

[bfundak at xxx.org]

Greetings,

I'll try to make this short and painless. 

This message is spurred by many things; First it was the beautifully
written message by Rachel Tucker concerning the all too short life of a
relatively unknown footballer, the sort of thing that would make a
brilliant novel if handled correctly (but I can't so I won't.) Secondly,
the fact that I have been attempting to make mixed tapes for the world
(and if you have been promised a tape you know who you are) means that I
have not listened to Belle and Sebastian in ages. Finally, my overall
dissatisfaction with life has contributed to my need to post to the list
and conceivably bore you all to death.

I really don't know what I have to complain about--I have a pretty full
February ahead; a will Oldham show this weekend, visiting my brother for
his birthday, seeing Kids in the Hall in Chicago. But still in the corner,
seducing me--failure.

What is it about failure that makes it so seductive? I think that for me
anyway, the human ability to try and succeed and yet fail miserably is
much more appealing than the salvation offered by believing in Christ.
While I know I would horribly ruin my life if I married someone I didn't
love, knock someone up or stay in a job i hate for little pay, there is
something about failure. Perhaps it is the spectacle--it is so much easier
to fail spectacularly rather than succeed spectacularly. Maybe it is
because it is easy--it may be better to try and never succeed than to
never try at all, but do you have to get up from the couch and stop
drinking beer to fail miserably?  No, you can fail no matter how much
effort you put into it.  Maybe it's just that fact that utter failure
leads to a loss of expectation. Quitting grad school with 6 hours left to
go is the closest I have come to flirting with failure--and now the
expectation that i might go back and finish has kind of gone away.
(Unfortunately I'm employed by the computer industry and I guess in tech
fields there is nowhere to go but up.)  I figure if I did knock someone up
I didn't love then maybe I wouldn't feel the pressure that comes with
being someone who wants to have one of those "traditional" (god, I hate
that word) family units (even though they don't exist).

But something keeps me grounded. For some reason I don't want to fail. So
the question I leave you with is this--

why shouldn't I?

Brandt 


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