This post may not be the best one I’ve ever written. It won’t be the greatest, won’t get a hundred thousand views, hell, won’t get a hundred. But it’s probably going to be the one that is the most personally impactful to me, because I finally understand something about me that I didn’t before. And I’m going to share it here.
I am a serial failure. Everything I’ve tried has failed. Including this blog. And now, I think I know why.
In my life, I have had exactly one of two motivations for everything I’ve ever done. One of those motivations is curiosity. I’ve always been very interested in how things work, what is possible, how I can accomplish something that I didn’t know how to do before. I have a very broad and varied talent stack – I can and have done many things that most people wouldn’t even attempt. I’ve performed piano in front of a couple of thousand people, I’ve rebuilt an auto engine, I’ve built software, I’ve learned some esoteric things. I’ve studied piano, I’ve studied Japanese, I’ve even composed music. All of this is true.
But I have another motivation as well. This is the motivation that has caused every one of those things I said I’ve done above to fail. I desperately want to gain validation as a human from these things. Once I’ve learned all that I feel I need to, I don’t have any reason to pursue further, because they do absolutely nothing to get me the attention and validation that I need. I’m not an “attention whore”, per se. I’m a “validation whore”. I’ll do anything at all if it will gain me popularity and acceptance. That’s the only way I ever feel like a human.
And it never comes, because it’s never genuine.
I won’t go back in time to earlier in my life and all of the different things that I’ve tried and failed, because I don’t need to. I’ve got one right here. I’ve got Japanese.
I didn’t know why I studied Japanese, and as I mentioned, I started to figure it out. I started to learn Japanese because I thought it would lead to acceptance, I thought it would lead to a culture that might accept me in a way that mine didn’t. But as I learned more, I came to realize that was an illusion. I started to build several different blogs in an attempt to find relevance, and that failed. It was always doomed to fail. My failings are broadcast for the world to see, and I was the last to be able to see them.
Well, here I am. A serial failure. But at least knowing why is part of the battle. Which is why I’m putting it here. It’s certainly not complimentary to myself, is it?