6 - Allowed to Fail

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In 2013 I turned 30 years old.  I thought by 30 I would be married, have a good permanent job with benefits, maybe even have a house.  I was so epically wrong… I hate to sound cliché, but as my 30th year approached and none of those milestones had come to fruition, I felt a “one-third life crisis.”

From elementary school to high school, I was involved in drama classes and school theatre productions.  I loved it.  I almost chose to study theatre in university.  But, being a big science nerd thanks in part to looking up to Dana Scully from the X-Files, and also after considering that job security in theatre work was probably slim to none, I pursued studies in the sciences.  The irony is that I’ve now been a health care professional for the last 8 years and I still don’t have a permanent job.  It would seem job security with good pay and benefits is lacking in my field… I should have become an actor, lol.

However, I don’t regret my choice to study science.  I loved that too.  But I had always missed my theatre classes.  Every year of my university and professional life I thought about returning to drama.  So not one week after I turned 30, I joined an acting class.  To be specific, an improv class.  I haven’t looked back since.

Improv, short for improvisational theatre, is creating scenes or stories on the spot.  No script. No dialogue rehearsed.  It requires you to really be in the moment.  Improv is about really listening and paying attention to your scene partners; agreeing with what has been offered to you; collaborating with everyone else on stage and the audience; accepting that nothing will be perfect; rolling with unplanned circumstances; accepting and moving forward from failure.  In short, to me, improv is about life.

As part of my therapy, I see a psychologist.  This therapy has been invaluable to me, especially with mental health illness outside of, but worsened by, the brain injury.  There are some things my psychologist has said to me that replay like tracks in my mind whenever they become relevant.  One time, I was talking to my psychologist about dating.  You see, I just recently started this whole dating thing post injury (and dating post injury is another blog post all to itself, lol).  I had a lot of feelings to work through in the beginning and, like I do, I was really over-analyzing the dynamic I had with this one guy… I was trying so hard to figure out how I could make it work (which should have been an indication that it just wasn’t working, lol).  In this moment, my psychologist said to me “You’re allowed to fail at this.”

Growing up, at home, in school, at work, I think we get a message that we’re not allowed to fail.  That failing is bad.  Avoid failing at all costs.  This, of course, is not only silly, but maybe even detrimental.  I will fail.  You will fail.  We will fail.  Failing is guaranteed.  Failing is a part of learning.  Growing from failure makes us better, stronger, more able to deal with things as they come.

In improv, failure is celebrated!  Take for example elimination games.  Often in these types of improv games, you are put on the spot to come up with an answer or witty response quickly.  If you hesitate, you’re eliminated from the game.  When you’re eliminated, everyone raises their hands and cheers! “Yay!!”  In scene work, failure often results in laughter and justifying or owning that failure is fun to watch and impressive.  Failure in improv may also look like accidentally doing or saying something horrible…we still appreciate this failure as it gives us a moment to reflect on why the action or dialogue was problematic - it helps us learn and grow from our mistakes.

In concussion recovery, I have failed a lot.  When recovering from a concussion, we’re often told to avoid or limit any activity or thing that triggers our symptoms.  This can be TV, computer, phone, exercise, reading, working, listening to music…i.e. this can mean avoiding or limiting EVERYTHING in life. Yet, we’re also told not to do too little.  So, watch a little TV; use the computer or your phone for just a bit; try some exercise, reading, working or listening to music, but do so in JUST the right amount and STOP before your symptoms are triggered… This is more than just hard to do.  It truly is a game of roulette.  Every day, my tolerance for activities changes.  Some days I can spend an hour or two on the computer.  Other days I can’t even look at a screen for 60 seconds with out epic pain.  Finding that fine line - that soft and hard edge between not doing too little, but also not doing too much, is completely fraught with failure.  I have and will again go over that line; I have and will again lose at this game of roulette.

Practicing improv and working with my psychologist has really taught me to embrace failure instead of fear it.  When I go to perform in an improv show with the expectation that it is going to be the best show ever, the pressure I put on myself and my team will cause me to fail hard.  Going into any relationship expecting the other person to behave in a certain way, or expecting to control for a positive outcome, will mess up the dynamic and that failure hurts.  During my recovery, when I have expected to be able to do certain activities on certain days at certain intensities because “I did it before and so should be able to do it again,” I have set myself up for failure. 

It’s funny.  When I let go of those expectations and accepted failure as part of the process, this is when I really started to feel better about my situation; when I started to lose less at this game of roulette…

I wrote this blog post yesterday, blog #6 for June 6th, but didn’t have the energy to post it until today, June 7th.  Yesterday, I chose this topic for the blog because I woke up feeling like shit.  I woke up with a headache.  I spent most of the day in bed.  It took all my energy to walk my dog.  When I did write this, I had to take many breaks and was having a hard time making this make sense.  My inability to get this blog post up yesterday wasn’t planned, but was very fitting for the theme, lol.

I know I’ve set myself the goal to write one blog post for every day in June.  But the reality is, I may fail at this.  There may be a day, or days, or even a week, or weeks when there will be no blog posts.  The true success of this blog isn’t to get 30 posts out this month, just like the true success of my life at 30 years old was not defined by marriage a job or a house.  The goal is to share my experience.  And if I fail at this goal, then that is sharing my experience in it’s truest form.

- Krystal