Break-ups, moving ‘home’, weight gain, mental health crisis, still another year not working as a journalist.
Pretty much sums up 2021. But its not all bad. Since the end of a long term relationship three months ago, and moving back in with my folks, five years to the day of moving out it’s been a tough year. Countless job interviews that have thus far all ended in – “We really liked you but you just don’t have quite enough experience”. Back to the drawing board we go.
Last week I got one of those Ads on Instagram for the book Failosophy: A Handbook for when things go wrong. I recognised the author, Elizabeth Days, she’s friends with Dolly Alterton, one of my favourite writers, someone I want to be exactly like. So I clicked the link, only a fiver on Amazon (we do not endorse Amazon purchases here at HS Blogs but I digress), I thought well this can’t hurt can it?
Only 140 pages, I started reading on Christmas Eve and finished it the other day. There are Seven Principles of Failure, and let me tell you, that from this point last year, when I was sitting in Ayr thinking everything that had gone wrong, already had. That 2021, would bring the end of Covid, many job prospects and ending the year with the same boy I began it with. Little did I know, how rock bottom it was about to get and none of those would be remotely true. But, in the past 12 months, I’ve been up and down. I’ve moved three times, I have failed so so so many times. But somewhere along reading those pages I dragged myself back up.
Everyday I got out of bed, it was an achievement, because it’s been a tough old year, plenty of time to think that’s it, I’ve hit a rock bottom I can’t get back out of.
But I remembered that on page 83, Elizabeth used the word extrapolate, (because I wrote on the back pages my interpretation of what it meant), I had no idea what it meant but I looked it up, and honestly still didn’t get it. But then I read it a few more times and concluded that it’s that you’ll learn what you want from life, as you go along and this might change over time, maybe everyday, but I know that you’ve got to at least stick around to find out what that might be.
- Failure just is. This was the first principle, that accepting that everything really happens for a reason. You know when they say the first step to anything – grief, admitting you have an addiction or that you need to break up with your partner- is acceptance. From reading Failosophy, I realised that accepting a failure is the only way to move on from it. It set me up with an open mind going into the rest of the book. With Quotes from guests from Day’s podcast – How to Fail, appearing throughout the book: “Success is a personal perception” The author, Jessie Burton said that. She pretty much covered it, I’ve been spending so much of the year focused on other what other people consider as success. But their idea of success will never be the same as mine and won’t ever make me happy. Its personal to me what happiness looks like.
Pfft I’m not about to divulge that information, maybe after the prosecco gets popped, I’ll give you a clue. - You are not your worst thoughts. As soon as I moved away for university, I decided I would never come back to Alford (rural Aberdeenshire), there’s very little public transport, one old man pub, no good coffee places – that aren’t full of old people and two take outs, that only take cash. So when I messaged my old boss from the Co-op I worked at when I was in school, to get my job back I felt a lot of shame. I won’t lie and say its been easy because it’s been awful. Entirely because of the customers. School children are annoying and loud, I swear it wasn’t like that in our day… probably. I’ve gone from living in a constituency that I helped go from Tory to SNP, to an SNP stronghold, back to a Tory tight-ass-grip, so you can imagine the judgy looks you get. The people who laugh when you say have a nice day. Not to mention, the people I went to school with, the exes, the parents of people who I went to school with, whose children have been successful is the past five years. But, if I’ve learned anything from this, it’s that when someone things they are better than you, they’re not and they probably have a tiny dick (or self-esteem issues).
- Almost everyone feels like they’ve failed at their twenties. A month away from being in my mid-twenties makes me feel sick, it’s disappearing and I feel like I’m wasting it. But what’s that? A global pandemic, thought so. I refuse to count this one as applying to me. I did expect to have a journalism job by now, but without the ability to get any experience (or enough to be considered as enough), I just have to accept that sometimes things just don’t work out the way you expect them to. But I’ll keep writing, so sorry in advance.
PS, what I’ve learned so far, is that your twenties is for messing up and learning from it. From what I’ve heard, your thirties are when it gets good. - Break-ups are not a tragedy. I miss my ex’s mum’s cooking, and the foxes in our back garden when we lived with his sister, I miss him fixing all my technology problems, and eh shit, I can’t think of anything else.
I learned how not to be treated by a partner and how not to be a toxic person in a relationship. In the three months since, I realised I’d lost myself in that relationship and I’ve learned to love myself again, and learned what I love. Hindsight taught me, that I deserve more, and that I need to put myself first. At least until Max Verstappen follows me back, #DM’sareopenforyou, not for anyone else though, sorry. - Failure is data acquisition. From every single failure I’ve mentioned so far, I’ve gotten to know myself a bit better. I feel clearer about what I want, and what I need to do to get there. I’ve gathered the information and the people I need around me. I think of all the job interviews I’ve not gotten, they’ve all gotten me a bit closer to getting the right job. This break-up has shown me how I need to go into my next relationship. Hitting what I would consider rock bottom (right now anyway) has given me the tools to build myself back up and be the version of myself that I want to be, I won’t say be my ‘best self’ because I will boak, but I do feel I’m that bit closer to just being myself.
- There is no such thing as a future you. I think that a lot of my current mental health issues are a result of worrying about the future me. I constantly find myself saying, well I can’t possibly be in this same position in two or three months, I can’t still look like this for that next birthday night out with the gals and I can’t possibly be working in retail when I turn 24. It’s a habit I have developed since the pandemic began. Comparing myself to friends around me, has been detrimental to my head getting into such a scramble. Anxiety induced panic attacks when trying to make future plans about simple things. All because I had been so scared that I wouldn’t achieve the frankly unrealistic goals I was setting for myself. What I really learned reading this chapter, was that end goals, are important. When you get there, not so much.
I saw through the bullshit of new years resolutions. Unattainable goals that you’ll give up after a month? Thought so. Know what a realistic goal is, this is mine but feel free to steal it; Just to be happy in the moment. - Being open about your vulnerabilities is the source of true strength. The phrase ‘true strength’ is a bit boaky for me personally but Elizabeth Day sums it up perfectly when she discusses her trauma of miscarriage. That as soon as she spoke to other people about the struggles she was facing with friends, the shame and fear around it disappeared.
Because how different are we all really? Hate to burst your bubble but not all that much. People are going through very similar struggles and hardship to you. I sent my friend a voice note about how low I was feeling last night and she replied saying you’ve hit the nail on the head there, I feel the exact same.
So, when you think you’re the only one without a decent paying job, you won’t be. The only person who dreads spending time with their family, someone out there relates. Hate your birthday or going to the beach, plenty people feel sick at the thought of sand between their toes. I don’t feel shame about this one, but I can’t be the only person who is repulsed by sloths right?
Elizabeth Day has been teaching us all ‘How to Fail’ since 2018, and how many people are better off since then? Well I’ve never been good with numbers but I’ll say a fair few, and I know that I wouldn’t have been as hopeful for what I can turn 2022 into for myself.
Discussing some of the guests from her podcast, and their failures, we see the behind the scenes of the edited conversations and interviews. From Camilla Thurlow’s anxiety, which I could relate to, and the place it puts you in, how she has grown from it and her bolster to fame after Love Island, that part I can’t relate to though. The book is like an analysis of the podcast, and gathering the Seven Principles of Failure in one place makes accepting these failures accessible to the reader.
What I’m saying, is that in this spin on a self-help book, Day takes you on a journey with her podcast guests and lets you know that no matter how big or small your failure seems, they can be solved and learned from in the same way.
Things couldn’t have gone more wrong for me this year, they aren’t going right just yet, but give it time, I got this.
Hx
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