Don’t Give Up on Yourself

“It’s better to have tried and failed than to have never failed at all.” People have told me some variation of that for years. I would always get annoyed because I didn’t like failing. I got sick of people telling me it was okay to fail. I would always think ‘No. It’s better to succeed. Failure is weakness.”

It took a long time to understand that failure is a part of growth. If everything was handed to you, if everything was easy, then it really wasn’t worth it. It didn’t serve the purpose of helping you to grow.

Working my way through college and my first few jobs, I figured that out real quick. I couldn’t get to where I really wanted to be without working hard to get there. Nobody wants to stay in their first job forever, most of the time.

I knew I wanted to make a name for myself one day. That’s what I’m still working on today. I work my butt off to put my best self forward even if making a name for me isn’t something that involves seeing it in spotlights or anything big like that. I just want to leave an impact on my society. I want my life to mean something.

I write in more forms than one. I have a background in sociology and I use it in my journalistic writing as well as my fiction. I feel like it adds layers to my stories and helps it to be more impactful. Sometimes it doesn’t work and people aren’t hip to it, and that’s okay. I tried and failed, but I learned something new. 

The most important part is that I take that failure and apply it to the next thing I work on, and I plan to keep doing that every single time. There is always something to be learned, even in success.

So just know, the quote at the beginning of this may seem dreadful, but it can help you to succeed and grow. Not just as a writer or a reader, but as a person. When you get knocked down, make sure you always get back up.