Failure and Success

Today, in one of her typically useful, enlightening and entertaining posts, esteemed correspondent Kay Olson of The Gimp Parade tells us, inter alia, of her "biggest blogging failure."

Wha'?  You can fail at this?  Oh, don't even tell me that!  No, no, no!  I am already failing at so many other things!  And where I come from, failure is just not acceptable, or wasn't.

Of course, where I come from doesn't really exist anymore.  The land is still there, but none of the people are, and the people who once did share space there and intertwined life threads sometimes quite intimately just don't have much to do with each other anymore -- and not always for any particular reason, it's just that we all went off on entirely different paths.

And as I've said before, more than once, not just here but commenting elsewhere, I'm okay with failure as long as no one else gets hurt.  So knowing I could fail at blogging, despite that I don't believe it's possible, would probably still not deter me from going ahead and blathering away here (and, yes, elsewhere) at whim.  I don't like breaking promises, though, not to other people, not even to myself.

One of the things I promised myself at the start of the summer was that by the end of the summer I would be strong enough to tricycle from my home practically within jumping distance of the Concord train station all the way to the only local organic farm I know how to get to, Hutchins Farm on Monument Street.  This is a distance of approximately 2½ miles.

You might not think that this would be particularly challenging.  You would be wrong.  It's not just that I'm out of shape.  Part of it is that the physics of tricycling are very different from the physics of bicycling, and that we must throw into the mix that I am doing it with only the power of one leg and buttock and that I weigh 200 lbs., over and above the fact that my tricycle weighs about twice what your average bike weighs (or so I estimate; I cannot find precise numbers online at this time, not even at the Torker website) and that, though adorable and blue, it's not exactly aerodynamically designed.  Another part of it is that Hutchins Farm is up a bit of a hill.  Everything I just said + hill = hilarity sometimes, frustration often.

It is not uncommon for me to get stuck on the little hill that raises the train tracks near my house a foot or two above street level, especially if my basket is full of a week's groceries for two large people and a starving-by-illness cat.  It is not uncommon for the good people of my neighborhood -- even the teenagers! -- to kindly offer to give me a push, or for me to reply, red-faced with embarrassment and exertion, "NO!  Er, thank you.  But no, I have to figure out how to do this for myself.  Thank you anyway.  Really."  And then I sit there, rocking back and forth and looking ridiculous until I do in fact get the thing to move.

Or, that is to say, I did sit there rocking back and forth, etc., until I figured out a couple of things, and until I got very much stronger than I was at the beginning of the summer.  (And yes, part of why I am stronger probably has much to do with ditching the wheelchair for home use.)

One thing I have figured out is that starting from a stopped position on a tricycle is not the same as starting from a stopped position on a bicycle.  Even using only one foot, provided the pedals are optimally positioned, it's a heck of a lot easier.  You don't have to get up to speed in order to achieve forward momentum on a trike.  You just have to have enough power at the start of the initial rotation of the pedals to move the machine, and this relies on both leg strength and leverage.

This means that I can stop dead on an upward hill and catch my breath, or photograph scenery.  I don't even have to take my organic foot off its pedal; in fact, leaving it there with slight backward pressure holds my trike in place using the coaster brake that I didn't even think I wanted in the first place.  Turns out, without that brake, I would just roll backward if I released my handbrake, which happens when I take pictures or go rummaging in bags in the basket behind my butt.  (Click to enlarge.)

When I remove pressure from the coaster brake by simply taking my organic foot off the pedal, the pedals rotate backward.  When the left pedal is 90° to 150° up from the road in the forward position, this creates an opportunity for perfect leverage.  All I have to do is thrust down with my left foot on the pedal, and the trike moves, and enough momentum is created for me to be able to pull the pedal up and complete that first rotation without undue strain.

Knowing this means I no longer feel pushed to pedal to exhaustion.  I can just pause and rest whenever I like.  Knowing this also means I don't get stuck anymore.  Assuming I'm not exhausted, just awkwardly placed, I just roll backward until the pedal is properly positioned and then start up again.

I find that my best exercises are all about endurance, not short bursts of energy.  The key to endurance sports -- or endurance living -- is pacing.  I can go up and down long staircases as long as I go slowly.  I can tricycle up a long hill -- though not yet a terribly steep one, I don't think, not yet -- pedaling slowly, breathing deeply and evenly, and stopping briefly as frequently as I have to.  I can go down a steep and sharply curving hill without falling and breaking my neck also by regulating my speed, not ever letting the trike hurtle, just gently coasting and braking, coasting and braking, gently, gently -- patiently.

A lot of my perspective on failure has to do with patience.  I guess that unless someone else is hurt by them, I don't really perceive individual failures of mine as failures as such.  Maybe it's because I also don't tend to see any one of them as a complete story.   Each one is a step in a direction I have chosen.  So all those times I got stuck on the train tracks or at intersections during rush hour or myriad other places where there was just a little slant to the road and usually a big, often impatient audience to boot?  Those were steps, steps on my learning curve.

And I did learn.  And now I don't get stuck on little hills, or even long ones.  I had to fail in order to learn, and whether I failed more or less than other people learning the same thing is completely irrelevant to, well, anything.  I had to take steps that would not complete in the way I planned.  And yet I just don't see these as failures, not really.

Time gets very stretchy when you see things this way.  Everything is a step on a path built on top of other paths made by other steps built on top of other paths, etc.  I do not see the whole shape of my own life; I don't think anyone can.  Yet I see everything I do as part of that shape, and that as long as I am doing, and learning, I am using my time and building that shape.  And that's what I'm supposed to be doing.  So sometimes this means that I miss deadlines, but I don't always think that's failing unless I've let someone else down.

I did not miss my deadline to get strong enough to pedal all the way to Hutchins Farm. "By the end of summer" really meant "before it gets too cold."  Sadly, I didn't make that deadline until after the farmstand closed for the year, but last Friday, when I pedalled out there to try to make a little painting, to try and fulfill another promise I made last year, fulfill it very late and not at all the way I planned, I did get there, on my tricycle, with a rear basket full of art supplies and cameras and two dollars in my wallet.

I was starving when I got there.  I bought some self-serve, post-season carrots with my two dollars, and began munching and walking.

My digital camera, which I rescued and resuscitated from a trashcan where it lay disemboweled and abandoned after my true love, its previous owner, had tried to fix it, has some nasty quirks, probably as a result of trauma, and does not always work properly, so most of the pictures I took wandering around and looking are on film shot with my 26-year-old Contax RTS, film I haven't had developed yet.  But we'd had some frosts, so the flowers were all dead.  The only thing to paint was leaves.  So I got down to it.

I found a white wire chair and plunked it under a beech tree with rosy gold leaves glowing in front of the sun like so many paper window ornaments.  I drew and painted until my fingers grew cold, and then I had to pack it in.

Sadly, this is all I got.

Not fabulous.  Not fabulous at all.  Honestly, I don't even think it's pretty, and that's a damn shame because the original was resplendent.  But you know what?  I learned some stuff.  I learned to bring gloves when I go painting outside in the autumn 2½ miles or more from home.  I learned to bring food and water because the farmstand might not still be open and carrots aren't really all that sustaining.  I learned that I need to move my seat down about half an inch, because on the way home I pulled something in my hip that made me walk the trike the last half a mile to my yard.

And I learned that I won't offer paintings I haven't already made as prizes in the next contest I throw, which will be held here on November 15 and will net the winner a crocheted wool scarf that it will take me about a week of television watching to create and will be far more beautiful than a bad painting and far quicker and more reliable to award because I crochet wool scarves every single day of my life, no joke.  (It's a compulsion.  I give them away anonymously to local shelters, and meanwhile I don't smoke cigarettes or snack continuously while loading my brain with television late at night when I'm my most tired and vulnerable.)

Meanwhile, tomorrow is supposed to be beautiful, and there are still one or two things for me to try again to paint.  Because ultimately, you know, I won't fail Bethieee (and I hope she sees it that way, too); I will paint her something nice not ugly, and I will send it to her, and I will have fulfilled my promise, eventually.

And Kay will fulfill her promise, too, I know it, because she will, because she's Kay, and because she is building the shape of her life, too, one step, one cycle of her wheels at a time.  She is going to write her questions or decide she doesn't have to, that she has already met the goal she meant to, and not be failing blogging after all.

It's just that neither is going to happen quite the way we planned.

(Click to enlarge.)

Comments

[Bipolarlawyercook]

Sara, I actually like that painting-- and if you think of it not as a failure, but as a crystallization of lessons learned the hard way, maybe the perspective changes, as you so beautifully wrote?

[Sara]

Oh, don't worry, BLC. I don't think of it as a complete waste of paper and pigment. It just didn't fulfill my every need for that excursion.

Aesthetically, as with so many other things, it displeases me because of context more than anything else. As detail in a much larger painting (this one is 4" h x 6" w), or as a tole painting on some decorative object, it mightn't fail at all. As its own thing? It's both too little and too much. And also, the colors are inaccurate, as are the textures. Heavy, thick and obvious, they have nothing to do with my model. But then, it is very difficult to render light through rose gold in wax on paper.

The thing I was painting from was a curtain of rosy-golden leaves. I should have painted the curtain, and I would have if I'd given myself more time and paper, and may still try if I have time to go back there before they all fall off. Instead I chose one branch of interesting leaves, which also happened to be frostbitten and half-eaten so that seen by themselves they aren't quite as compelling, especially when rendered in fading light with half-frozen fingers by someone who needs new glasses. As part of the curtain, though, they were just so many more elements of intricacy and bedazzlement.

And I'm sure you can see how that connects to my points about failure. :) There is no crystallization, you know, just the rare illusion of it among choices and steps, choices and steps in an overall aggregation, the "true" shape or significance of which may not be immediately obvious.

[alphabitch]

"all rights reserved, even though it sucks" might be the funniest thing I've seen all day.

[Sara]

It's trash, but it's my trash. You want it? Go make your own! ;)

[Kay]

Yes, there will be questions. In the spring when Liz's next project is ready. Yay! See, now that I've mea culpa-ed my guilt, all is well, though I believe your process of not minding failure is better.

[Sara]

See? I knew it. :)

It's not that I never mind failure, you understand. I am certainly capable of gnashing my teeth in frustration and embarrassment in the instant when things don't go my way just like everyone else. (Ask my true love, for example, how many times I shrieked "I hate gravity! I'm f*cking sick of gravity!" just today.) It's that I rarely see failure as permanent or even important. It's just process, you know? And I accept it as such.

[bethieee]

You may have noticed that my blog is functionally dead. I completely understand getting caught up in things and having plans go differently than expected.
It's wonderful to read about your escapades, tricycle, travel, etcetera. Thank you for sharing.

[Sara]

Functionally dead? I just thought it was sleeping. :)

And I have diligently been trying to find something just right to paint for you. I don't know if you read in an earlier post, but the freakin' Tibetan lily never bloomed. The leaves came up, and then they died back by August. Then we had the second-driest August on record for this area, and my whole garden shriveled and died because I slacked, so my secondary source of subject matter also didn't happen.

Yesterday I was going to try to paint the sweet peas that were my last garden flowers still going great guns on my balcony despite horrible neglect, but then I put it off until this morning, only we had a frost that kind of wrecked them last night.

I may have to resort to painting from one of the bazillion photos I snapped this summer of things actually in bloom while they were blooming. So, yeah, it's not going to be quite what I planned or promised, but dammit it will still be nice! :)

Thanks for your patience and understanding. I hope whatever you're doing instead of blogging your knitting life is lots and lots of fun.

[Amorette]

I so feel your pain re: getting momentum up on a trike. I get to the end of my parents' driveway and try to get started...sometimes I have to scoot off the seat and waddle to get going.

If, optimally, the sidewalks are clear, I use those. My limitations are mainly in my neck, and I can't turn my head to see around me. As with my failed "handicapped" driving lessons, I can't make any sense of the mirrors and thus have no idea who's coming up behind me and too much to lose if I get socked by something.

Normally, it's a non-issue. If there's a walker or something, I cross onto the street and wait for her to pass, then get back on the sidewalk.

Unfortunately, the nether end of my street is densely populated by inconsiderate rednecks, who park their mud-crusted pickups across the sidewalk to leave the driveway free for meat-smokin' or some other git-'er-done pursuit. This means I either have to ride on the streets for longer than is safe, or cross back and forth every time I come upon one of these roadblocks.

Some neighborhoods have nice, tapered pieces of concrete between the end of the driveways and the gutters. Not ours. To get from the sidewalk to the street, I have to go down about 4' of sloped driveway-end and over a tall curb into the street, and then back again. It throws my balance all funny and there's always a sickening moment where it feels like my equilibrium is lost altogether.

I've been known to mutter "Oh, I hate you" under my breath when I see one of those damn pickup trucks. I feel like hissing at them.