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How to Succeed at Failure
Written By: Donna Rhodes | Issue: 2021/09 – September
Donna’s uncovered one of the Universal Truths about Last Year and, we suspect, the years going forward.
2020, the Year of the Maniacal Flying Monkeys, freed-up a lot of time, albeit unrequested. Many of us took the opportunity to write a family history, repaint the house, inventory our TP stockpile, and organize boxes of randomness spilling out of closets.
And then, there were the people like me, the ones who managed to enthusiastically start new projects, not finish them, and stash them away.
It’s with this backstory that I introduce you to the Polly Postpone School of Procrastination.
For those of you who’re looking to follow me, here are Polly Postpone’s Guidelines: The Ten Commandments of PP (Project Phailure):
1. Always choose an expensive, oversized, impossible undertaking. Something totally beyond your capability.
2. Jump right into it. Don’t bother reading instructions. Vagueness, the core of frustration, is essential.
3. Make frequent miscalculations to maintain a high level of irritation.
4. Set totally unrealistic goals. Then, for hours, sit around imagining how amazing your finished project will be.
5. Make your workspace the middle of household traffic so your family will have to walk around it and suffer right along with you…
6. Stuff it in the closet (no more than half-finished) for months, better yet, years.
7. Harbor a tremendous amount of guilt over its non-completion.
8. Whine repeatedly to friends, family, sometimes strangers, over your unfinished creations.
9. Enter art/craft shows, forcing deadlines on yourself in a Hail Mary effort to get things finished. Then fail miserably.
10. Finally, and most importantly, if you find yourself on the verge of completing something, lower your standards immediately. If you finish, you will make the rest of us look bad, and, worse yet, you’ll confound your inner bum.
As I conclude this editorial, some of you are wagging a finger at me, saying, “Aha! You finished something!” just remember, an article is not done until the last word is…
