Success and failure coexist. We can succeed at pretty much anything.
We can also fail at anything, too. And, neither should define us (unless we let them).

We cannot control whether our actions result in success or failure. Ideally, we would never pick failure every time. Past successes, connections made, and skills learned all help replicate success, but those are not a guarantee for anything.

Over the years, I’ve tried to be a freelancer, a translator, a software developer, a course creator, an agency owner, a startup owner, an employee, and many more. Some of those were successes, but many were losses. And what’s even more fascinating is that I have even more questions about how to be an adult and make a living now than I did when I was starting. The more you learn, the more you realise what you don’t know.

Many victories come from not letting screwups become setbacks. We win not because we don’t screw up but because we screw up enough times to learn that those screwups have led us to the only possible outcome: not screwing up as much (and hopefully learning from our mistakes). Or, harder still, is knowing when a screwup requires perseverance and when it requires just saying no and running headlong in a new direction.

Time invested, money spent, skills acquired, effort exerted. These can all help steer us towards success, but it’s not guaranteed we’ll get there. We have a lot less control than we think we do.

What we can control is how and where we spend our money, where we focus our time, what skills we acquire and how we use our efforts.

So if we can succeed or fail at anything, why don’t we try succeeding or failing at something we give a shit about?

I can’t predict my own success or failure (nor can I predict the future), but I can align with what I think is important work for me.
Important work isn’t an absolute–it’s more a compass to show me the direction to travel in so I can do

It seems better to fail at something that genuinely matters than to succeed at something that doesn’t.

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