This video takes a while, but ultimately this guy pulls up a good sized vase, it's off center, and it finally wobbles and goes splat. Is this a failure? My best friend in high school, a guy named Darrin, got me into pottery, and we came up with a different take on failure while throwing pots on the wheel.
I have a much different view of what "failure" is, than most people. This started with throwing pottery while I was in high school. At the beginning of my junior year at Boise High School, in Boise, Idaho, a guy named Darrin and I hated our small, half size lockers, and we went looking for a couple of open, full size lockers to take over. We found two, side by side, and became best friends as the year went on. Being one of the best pottery students at the time in our school, he got cleared to go into the pottery room at lunch, to throw pots on the wheel. I started going in and hanging out with him, and he soon taught me how to throw pots on a wheel.
Making pottery on a wheel is a weird idea. You start with a wet lump of what it basically mud, and on a good day, you have a vase, a pot, a jug, a spittoon, or a bowl when you finish. Once you get the basics down, it's just a lot of fun to create pottery on the wheel. As we threw pots and talked during lunch hours, Darrin and I talked about the different results of a session at the pottery wheel. We would sit down each time with some really cool vase or jug idea in our mind. That was the goal for the day.
The thing with clay is that you have to continually add water to it while working on the wheel. So as you center the clay, open the hole in the middle, and then pull up the walls of the initial cylinder, the clay gets softer and softer. You can see that process in the video above. All the while, you need to keep the clay cylinder centered, and push the limits of that hunk of clay.
If you let the clay get off center, or it gets too soft, it wobbles and the top part falls. Usually you can catch it, and cut the top part off with a needlepoint, and there's still a chunk left on the wheel. There's not enough clay to make a cool shaped vase, jug, or large bowl. But even after losing the top part of the cylinder, you can make a spittoon shape. If you keep pushing the clay, and the spittoon flopped, you still had enough clay to make an ashtray. OK, this was the 80's, and we all knew people who smoked, and you could always find someone to give the ashtray to after it was fired and glazed.
If you totally screwed up on the pottery wheel, and couldn't even make an ashtray, you scraped the little hunk of clay left off the wheel. Was that a failure? Darrin and I debated this. Every time we sat down at the pottery wheel to make something, it was fun. Most of the time we didn't end up with the cool shaped vase or jug we wanted to make, it was still fun. Darrin and I came to the conclusion that there was no "failure" when working on a pottery wheel. The worst case scenario was that we scraped the clay off the wheel when done, and called it a "learning experience." So our four stages of making pots were: Vase, Spittoon, Ashtray, and Learning Experience. There was no failure, the worst that happened was that we had fun, and learned something that would help us the next time.
With my year and a half of throwing pots in high school, my concept of what failure had changed. I was getting seriously into BMX freestyle at the same time, where that new idea of failure also came into play. Some days I landed my tricks well, some days I didn't, but still had fun. Either way, the long term trend was continual progression. In BMX freestyle I really learned how important failure is to eventual success. BMX freestylers, skateboarders, all the action sports people, as well as many mainstream sports, spend much of their time "failing," missing their tricks, in order to further improve and perfect their physical skills. "Failure" is what action sports people do every day, so they can later do incredible tricks and stunts, often for a crowd, a video camera, or at a contest.
Getting used to "failing," and making it part of the process, in art, action sports, or many other things, the fear of failing diminishes, which opens us up to more creative ideas, in many cases.
But I've also worked on TV crews, hanging lights as a roadie type guy, and at Cirque du Soleil, where people could get seriously injured, maybe even killed, if someone failed at their job. When you're holding a belay rope for someone climbing up a 32 foot high climbing wall, for example, failure is not an option. But most of life falls somewhere in between, usually a lot closer to the pottery level.
About 90 days ago, I got a good-sized chunk of money from the pandemic unemployment program. My goal was to get the best deal on a room to stay in (since I was homeless then), and I'd have 60 to 90 days to build some kind of business to support myself, which would take a $2,500 to $3,000 a month of income. That's a tall order. Guess what, I failed. Then money got shut off long before I expected, the best deal on a room cost me a ton, but it was during a full pandemic shutdown mode. I did manage to write a 250 page ebook during that time, and sold 50 copies inexpensively. But I had banking issues, couldn't get my online store fully functional, and now I'm back close to where I was 90 days ago, financially. Failure.
I don't know anyone else that has started a business, and had a cash flow they could live off of in 90 days, but I couldn't manage it. What I have learned from years of "failing" and successes, like throwing pottery on a wheel in high school, and years of learning freestyle tricks on my bike, is that the next step is what matters. I've learned to get back up and keep going after a "failure," no matter how big or small. I do my best to turn it into a learning experience. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. But in the long run, persistence usually pays off at some point. Keep on keeping on. That's where I'm at... after a BIG learning experience. And hey, I've been wanting to write an actual book my whole life. OK, it was electronic, and not earth shattering by any means. But 250 pages qualifies, I've written my first book. So in a big "failure," a kernel of future success, perhaps. Onward.
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