Failure is Fun

I’m terrible at softball – and that’s just how I like it.

I play on a softball team in a local league. It’s their fault, really. I warned them before I joined I couldn’t catch, throw or run. They said, “You’re in!” So I play, and every week I prove I am not only slow, but lack any semblance of hand-eye coordination. Our losing streak is unparalleled.

I like it. Being the worst player on the worst team in the league is good for me. Sure, I could get obsessive about my failure and actually practice or some such nonsense, but that defeats the purpose. You see, I’m a perfectionist.

Every day I find myself muttering how terrible I am over some minor percieved imperfection. Little things, like forgetting the proper syntax for an SQL query or sending an email without the attachment I referenced in the message. If someone actually mentions I made a mistake? I’ll spend days berating my own stupidity.

I come by it honestly. My mother never felt my achievements were worth recognising if I wasn’t the best. Not just the best in my class, or my best effort, but the best EVER ANYWHERE. If I was struggling? I had no right to complain unless my situation was the WORST EVER. I spent my life getting the message: if I’m not perfect, perfectly good or perfectly bad, I don’t matter.

It’s bullshit, of course. My work has value, even if I had to look up the syntaxt for an Insert statement or resend an email with a correction. But softball is different than that. In softball, I can fail. Gloriously, epically fail. Be horrible and make mistakes and let the team down every time. And my self esteem doesn’t ride on the outcome of the game.

I get to enjoy just being there. I do something, I do it badly, and I laugh. Being terrible at softball is helping me learn how to fail. I put myself out there, show off my failure to the world, and I survive it. Heck, there aren’t even any cosequences! Ok, there are a few bruises when I get hit with a ball I didn’t catch, but I don’t even notice most of the time. And maybe, just maybe, I can carry some of that failure back to the rest of my life.

Maybe I can learn not to let my self esteem ride on being the best EVER, which I’ll never be. Maybe I can learn to let my work be gloriously imperfect, rather than mediocre-ly perfect. Maybe I can practice and get better at softball.

Or maybe not.