The Year of the Great Big, Beautiful Mistake
Posted by Annette on December 9, 2013
I'm working on my Annual Review. In the process, I've made an awesome discovery. I'm beyond stoked to share it:
In 2013, I made enormous mistakes.
Hooray!
Historically, I've plotted, demurred, retreated and crab-walked away from potential screwups. The gentle way to explain it is that I'm not a naturally devil-may-care personality, but let's put it this way: I'm barely even brave. However, during my annual review on the way in to 2013, I decided to let myself bang off the walls of the tunnel (concussing myself in the process, actually, but that's how it goes), to BASE-jump my heart out all summer long (150 times in four months), to throw myself into full-on, full time writing and to challenge the perimeters of love. (I learned in the process that it has none. More on that later).
In 2013, I made big mistakes in the same way you throw big bets on the table in Vegas. At the end of the year, I'm sitting waist-deep in chips. Ding ding ding ding ding.
I'm still working on my review, but today I'm celebrating mistakes. New mistakes -- big mistakes -- wild mistakes -- MY mistakes. I'm grateful that I made them, because in doing so I was able to see them for what they were. They weren't mistakes at all. They were risky investments with a big payoff.
What was 2013 for you?
"Make new mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before."
- Neil Gaiman
"If you aren't making mistakes, you are not taking enough risks."
- Debbie Millman
"Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes."
― Oscar Wilde
"I am glad that I paid so little attention to good advice; had I abided by it I might have been saved from some of my most valuable mistakes."
― Edna St. Vincent Millay
"Make mistakes, make mistakes, make mistakes. Just make sure they're your mistakes."
― Fiona Apple
"If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error."
― John Kenneth Galbraith
