DAIS&NAID

It's very hard to find the word 'failure' in a magazine, which is where I usually source my zine-y headers. There's a tendency to focus on success, and see failure as shame-worthy and something to be hidden.

So the graphic for this weekly exploration of blunders and defeats is snapped from my own scrawly notes on a dollar-store newsprint pad.

My Tuesdays are now celebrations of failure. When I mentioned this in my co-writing group this morning, someone suggested I use the word 'challenges' instead—and then laughed knowingly when I said, "I actually really like failures."

[Really fighting my urge to see the very header above as a failure, because it's barely legible and makes it look like I was possibly holding the pen between my toes when I wrote it.]

I'm a marketing consultant for writers, and one of the things I loop-say on repeat is, and feel free to give me a super-annoying nasal and judgy voice for it,"Newsletters are the best way to connect consistently with your audience."

Cue hysterical laughter and the thump of total collapse. I've been so freakin neurotic and overthinky that I've produced exactly two newsletters in over two years. Hence my plan for my new knuckle tattoos: right hand, pinkie to index, upside-down to me: DAIS; left hand, index to pinkie: NAID.

DO AS I SAY & NOT AS I DO.

Or don't do as I say because, you know, you're a grownup and who am I to boss you. But do consider having a regular email newsletter. And, while I will likely regret this one day, I do recommend Substack for it, even though, yes, it's run by venture capitalists who aren't afraid of platforming Nazis if it might turn them a profit. Better yet, start a snail-mail newsletter, maybe even a chain letter.

Another failure I'm celebrating today is my rejection for the Diaspora Dialogues fellowship I applied for and wanted ALOT. Boohoo. I might follow my brilliant pal Désirée Penner's lead and create a blackout/erasure poem with the generic rejection email I received.

Some might suggest (as two people did today, when I mentioned this blog theme) that failure is an opportunity to learn. Is that what Beckett meant with his famous mantra?

Or was that, as I hope, a delightfully absurdist suggestion: Do it even worse next time.

Because, why not screw up and learn nothing, why not go downhill? Why do we always need to be 'improving' in ways that are measurable by a broken, late-stage-capitalist society?

How about you—any failures you'd like to celebrate today? Happy to help!