Three Failures Ahead of Schedule

Gym. Novel. Parenting. Strong returns in humiliation across all three sectors

It was Saturday morning. I was lying on a bench, a bar hovering above my chest, arms shaking, while a woman twice my age watched in polite silence. This is called bench pressing. Or so I’ve been told.

But I could not lift the bar back up.

Welp. I did it again. The third failure of the week.

I had failed multiple times in multiple categories. A diversified portfolio of failure, actually. Gym. Novel. Parenting. Strong returns in humiliation across all three sectors.

I could have handled this the healthy, evolved way -- gone straight home, sat with my feelings, journaled, or made a nourishing chicken dumpling soup. Instead I did what any self-respecting midlife recalibrator does: I opened LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is not my first scrolling choice. It doesn’t have puppy videos. It doesn’t have those cooking reels where someone makes a seven-course dinner out of Tuesday’s leftovers, a jar of pickles, and a star-shaped cookie cutter. LinkedIn is where people post their AI generated wins with suspiciously perfect lighting and lessons learned that somehow always end in a promotion. After twenty minutes of people announcing they’d been laid off and calling it a “pivot to purpose,” I found a post from Harley Finkelstein, the Shopify president, and I actually... “liked” it.

“The first idea usually fails. The second often does too. Sometimes the third. That’s not the exception. That’s the pattern. Failure matters less than how you respond to it. In the gym, failure isn’t a problem. It’s the whole program.”

I felt that in my wobbly, underloaded chest.

The Gym

So what happened? Well, during Saturday morning weight class my coach decided I was ready to bench press like a serious person. Ten pounds on each side. 5-10 reps. I was quietly thrilled, already composing the Instagram caption in my head, when he stopped me mid-rep.

“You have to bring it all the way down. Touch your chest. Then back up.”

Oh. That bench press.

Turns out I had been doing a very convincing impression of bench pressing, which is apparently not the same thing. The moment I tried the full range of motion I stalled on the way down, arms shaking, wanting to cry. He pulled the weight immediately.

I was very sure the bar itself was judging me. The bar weighs forty-five pounds. So.

But going lighter to get the form right means actually building the muscle instead of just performing the idea of building the muscle. Which, now that I write it out, is a perfectly decent metaphor for everything. Annoying but true.

The Novel

I have 75,000 words that exactly two people have read end to end: my mother and my brother. Oh, and my friend’s teenager. But I paid them.

I just received my 15th rejection letter from a literary agent. Fifteen. One seemed genuinely interested -- actual emails, real enthusiasm, the kind of attention that made me google “what to wear to a book launch” and, fine, start a Pinterest board -- and then: no.

So I have a complete novel, a small pile of polite rejections, and the recurring 3am thought that maybe I should just accept my fate, keep my day job, and stick to reposting inspirational quotes like “If you can’t be kind, at least be vague.” Maybe I’d print out my book with that exact quote and use the pages as packing material. Really give the words a purpose.

And then I think about J.K. Rowling, who did NOT give up.

Harry Potter was rejected over twelve times. Publishers simply could not picture a children’s novel about a school for wizards finding an audience. And now my daughter and her friends wear wizard costumes to school.

I have fifteen rejections. JK had twelve. By that math, I am simply three failures ahead of schedule.

Do I give up? I do not. My 75,000 words are not going to live forever in a Google Doc, haunting me like a very literary ghost. The publishing industry is changing. Self-publishing is no longer the consolation prize. It’s increasingly the strategic choice. I just have to figure out my next move.

But I will.

The Shoes

Vivi’s sneakers died. Lost to a deep creek near our house, in circumstances I’ve chosen not to examine too closely.

So I did what any loving, organized mother does: I ordered replacements online. Confidently. Without measuring her feet first, because surely I know my own child’s shoe size. I have been her mother for over eight years. I have bought her shoes before. I know things.

Nope. I do not know things.

“Mom, did you remember to get my new sneakers for school today?” she asked Monday morning.

“Of course!” I responded, confidently showing her multiple boxes. Yet what arrived at our house was a Goldilocks shoe situation with no resolution. Too small. Too big. Too small again. Her feet are fine. Her mother’s memory is not. No shoes fit her feet. School was happening regardless.

She sighed, went into her closet and grabbed an old pair of cowboy boots.

Specifically: the cowboy boots still dusty from our last trip to the horse barn where she rides. She walked out the door in shorts, a tee shirt and cowboy boots like this was simply the obvious choice. Total authority. She didn’t spiral or make it a whole thing. She just wore them.

She also walked home barefoot that afternoon, boots in hand, which is its own kind of statement.

No failure. Just a new look. (And a tetanus booster, probably.)

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Failure, it turns out, is not the opposite of progress. It’s the actual mechanism of it. The bench press rep that exposes bad form. The rejection that sends you back to get creative. The wrong shoe size that produces, unexpectedly, a great fashion statement.

The question isn’t whether you’ll fail. You will. I will. Probably this week. Possibly before lunch.

The question is whether you fix your form, wear the boots, and go again anyway.

I’ll let you know how it goes.