How to Fail

In honor of my Patreon launch, I’ll be posting every three hours today starting at 8am PST.

“We’ve actually never had something good happen to us that didn’t come off of a failure.”
-Tom Lennon, of Reno 911! and The Odd Couple on his career, as told to the Nerdist Podcast, April 6, 2015.

Part of what this blog has given me is the ability to fail at something. Five posts a week for more than three years leads to a lot of shitty content. And that was actually the initial mission of this whole endeavor. I was so paralyzed over what to make, and how it would be received that I kept otherwise good posts in drafts for years sometimes because I was worried what people would think.

Well, I can tell you that some people think I suck. They’ve told me. When I was writing for Geared for Gamers, the very first comment on my very first article was from a guy who called himself CM Punk (I’m pretty sure he wasn’t the real CM Punk), and all it said was “I bet your a fat cunt.” He’s right on both accounts.

Don’t worry about whether your idea is good or bad. It’s not the only one you’ll have. Don’t worry about what other people will think. There are more than six billion of us, we’re bound to disagree. Worry instead whether or not you can show up every day for the next year, or two years, or eighty years and make the same effort that you make the day, or the year, or the decade before. Because that’s what matters.

When deciding what to spend your time on, I recommend looking for something you would do in secret if you had to. Because that’s the kind of dedication that sustains you though the years. And yes, masturbation is a job.

Try sincerely, and then let the rest go. How it’s received, what happens after you make it, that isn’t your business anymore. All that matters is making the next thing. In that context failure becomes a propulsion system, moving us forward to the next project, the next solution.


Thanks to Julia for being my second Patron!

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