Mistakes

Everybody makes mistakes.  I'll just state that up front -- everybody makes mistakes.  Some are creative; some are personal.  The simple fact is that none of us is immune to making mistakes.

Take me, for instance: I made a huge mistake yesterday because I didn't put up my regularly-scheduled Sunday morning blog post.  I had the time, I had the internet access ... I just didn't do it.  It was a mistake, pure and simple.

What we need to do, what we need to work on (and in this I include myself, too) is not confusing a mistake with failure. 

This is something I struggle with, as well.  In fact, up until about two minutes before I put my fingers on the keyboard, this blog post was going to be entitled Failure, and it was only as I started thinking through what I would write here that I realized that it wasn't a failure on my part that I didn't post on The Creative yesterday; I just made a mistake.

Mistakes are a natural part of the creative process, and, indeed, of the process of life in general.  They are one of mankind's greatest tools for learning what works and what doesn't.  They feel really awful when we make them, but we usually come out the other side better for having made them.

For me, what did I learn by not blogging on my regularly-scheduled day?  I learned that it wasn't a terribly nice thing to do to my readers, but that if I regroup and get them a blog post that's only a day late, there's a very real chance they'll forgive me.  I also learned that when I've got something like an overdue blog post hanging over me, it eats at me, gnawing away until I actually sit down and get the thing written.

So, mistakes and failure and two separate things, right?  Well, no.  Multiple mistakes -- especially mistakes we don't learn anything from -- can lead to failure quite easily.  Failure comes when we don't heed the lessons our actions try to teach us, and instead blunder blindly forward, certain that what we're doing is right, all evidence to the contrary.

So to you, dear readers, I apologize for my mistake yesterday in not posting on time.  We should be back to our regular Wednesday and Sunday schedule this week, with a special New Year's edition of the Saturday Summary.  Until then, enjoy what remains of 2010, and best of luck in creatively getting rid of those leftovers!