You're Not Special

by Meghan Rienks

  chapter 16 dealing with failure

  I am great at failing. I fail all the time. I pretty much majored in failing. Not literally, because if that really was a major, I’m pretty sure I would have walked away with a much better GPA. I got fired from a job at a frozen yogurt shop because I couldn’t make a medium sundae. I also ditched work to go to a party, but I was already on thin ice (cream). If anyone inquired why I no longer served them waffle cones, I blamed the rigors of my schedule (lol) conflicting with my schoolwork (lol). The big thing about failure is that nobody wants to admit to it. It’s like picking your nose: everybody pretends they don’t go digging for gold in their car during traffic, but they’re just lying.

  Yeah, it sucks to fail. It feels fucking terrible, and I’m not going to dispute that. But, sadly, it’s not going anywhere: failure is an unavoidable obstacle in life. You don’t grow out of failing, you learn to fail better or just differently. The things we struggled with or that tanked us in our younger years, we learn from—and we use that to avoid making those mistakes again. But with age and maturity comes a whole new wave of obstacles and life events for us to fail at. It’s not about trying to eliminate failure from our lives; that’s just unrealistic. It’s about learning how to deal with our failures in a way that helps us grow and also doesn’t make us complete emotional wrecks all the time. (But you are certainly allowed to be an emotional wreck some of the time, or at least that’s what I tell myself in order to feel okay about the fact that my car has seen more tears than a showing of P.S. I Love You.) In my long-term committed relationship with failure, I’ve learned a few things. Without further ado, my takeaways:

  5 steps to a foolproof failure

  Step 1: Let it happen. Not to be confused with “Adele Dazeem’s” “Let It Go.” More like what they teach you in a trust fall: Just let it happen. I mean, if you’re driving a car and you start to drift into oncoming traffic, yeah, merge your ass back into your own lane. But if you’re in the middle of a math test you didn’t study for, and it’s too late to fake illness, don’t bust out the waterworks and attempt to dish blame on everybody else. If you don’t take ownership of your responsibilities, and the second something goes wrong you start to play the blame game, you never learn how to prevent those mistakes. Sometimes you just need to fall on your ass before you can pick yourself back up. This also goes for watching somebody else fail. If we coddle our friends and our partners in attempts to shield them from any mistakes or misfortune, they live their lives in this bubble. And when that bubble inevitably bursts, it’ll be so overwhelming, they won’t know how to deal with it. Sometimes we need to be wrong. Sometimes we need to try our best and have that still not be good enough. There is nothing more motivating than building something from the ground up, making diamonds out of coal, and making yourself proud. If failure hits you head-on, take it with grace and inspiration. If you need to cry, I highly recommend showers and cars. Avoid bathroom stalls—so cliché.

  Step 2: Sit in it. Or wallow in it, depending on the severity and your level of dramatics. This is a common theme in most of the advice I dish out: Allow a certain amount of time to let yourself feel whatever you’re feeling. I strongly believe that in order to fully understand and move past something, you need to give your feelings their due and let them run their course. However big or small your failure was, your automatic reaction is justified: your feelings are valid because you feel them. The chances are low that whatever happened will be detrimental to all aspects of your life from this point on, but in that moment it’s going to feel like the end of the world. That’s okay. Feel whatever you’re feeling, because shutting that away and ignoring it isn’t doing anybody any good. It’s crippling and it’s immobilizing. Feel it for a moment or a day or a weekend, or the length of time it takes you to drive to Target for some retail therapy.

  Step 3: Accept responsibility, but don’t assume defeat. I think this step is the hardest. We have a hard time owning up to our mistakes. It is just a fact that nobody wants to be at fault, especially when it affects other people. We tend to naturally come up with excuses and blame the circumstances and situations that led to our failures. These hopefully take some if not all of the blame off us. I, for one, blame nonexistent traffic and street construction for tardiness when in reality I couldn’t pick out what shoes to wear. Those common white lies we tell can be completely harmless, but that habit can bleed into much bigger things. We point fingers left and right at people who we think are at fault because our ego and our sense of pride cannot take the embarrassment and self-loathing that come with failure that’s all our own. I’m not saying you should accept the full weight of the blame for a class or group project you guys tanked; just own up to your part in the debacle. That said, you also need to be careful about not taking responsibility too far or letting it eat away at you. There’s a difference in accepting that you’re the one at fault for something and letting that guilt and shame weigh you down. I really used to struggle with this and, honestly, sometimes I still do. When I know I’ve done something wrong or made a grave mistake, my instinctive reaction is to completely shut down. What’s really helped me get better at this is the realization that a tail-between-the-legs moment is just so unproductive. The time I’ve spent beating myself up about whatever does nothing but drag me down further. If I continue to be down about it, I’m walking away from the situation more insecure, unsure, and timid than I was when I was in it. If I’m so terrified about making a mistake that I’m looking over my shoulder—or, worse, I just remove myself from those situations or deny myself those opportunities—I’ve let this single failure define my work ethic and damage my self-confidence. Find the aspects of the failure that were by your hand, accept that fact, and…

  Step 4: Learn from it. This takes time. I honestly think I’m finally learning from failures that are fifteen years old. I’m not kidding. I also believe that this is an ongoing process rather than just a step. There are the seemingly obvious lessons that come pretty quickly, but as we get older and our perception of the world and ourselves widens, I think there’s room to learn more lessons from those same mistakes. It’s not about figuring everything out as fast as you can but more about just being open to whatever realizations come from it, no matter how long they take. More than just recognizing the lessons to be learned, it’s about applying them. There are the obvious ways to implement said lessons—something as simple as setting your alarm an hour earlier or signing up for an Excel class. Those are the immediate and proactive ways to ensure that you’ll never make the same mistake again. Then there are the less obvious lessons to be learned, and those take time and a lot of self-reflection. Sometimes those lessons take multiple failures before they really start to sink in and spark a change. We’re ever-changing, ever-evolving creatures, and there is no timeline or expiration date on our growth. We just have to be open to it.

  Step 5: Make better mistakes, because you’re still going to make them. The only time you really fail is when you make the same mistake twice. Fail better. You probably won’t fail less often, because as we get older, we have more opportunities to fail. As a kid I assumed that being “grown up” knighted you with some sort of all-knowing godlike power and knowledge. But the older I get, I’m no closer to this undefinable “grown-up” stage in my life. It’s like when you’re a freshman in high school and the seniors seem so big, but when you become a senior you wonder why you never got as big as they were. We have this idea of what it’s going to feel like, to one day be the thing we’re looking up at. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. When we’re growing up, holding our superiors and elders to an untouchable standard gives us role models and qualities to aspire to. It holds us accountable and makes us want to fill those big shoes. As we get older, we begin to realize everybody is just making it up as they go along. Now it’s comforting to know everybody is just as lost as I am; as a kid it was comforting to feel like somebody had all the answers. I wanted so desperately to achieve that level of ad
ulthood, and that made me fail better. It made me reach high for things that made me fall further, but it kept me climbing in the trees and not staying there on the ground.

  I still fuck up all the time. Like, all the time. I run out of gas, I lose my wallet, I say something dumb in front of somebody important, and I neglect to go to the dentist until I need a root canal. I do all kinds of stupid shit, and I do it all the time. That’s just life. All I can do is try to make the shit I do a little less stupid, hopefully, sometimes.

  You’re going to fail. I know that’s probably not comforting or what you want to hear, but it’s the truth. I do hope you find some comfort in the fact that everyone does fail. Some people wear their failures with pride, and others tuck them far away so nobody can see. The people we put on pedestals are imperfect creatures. We all are. We’re human and we’re flawed and we’re one and the same. So fail. Fail hard, fail often, and fail again, because that means you’re trying. It means you’re taking risks and you’re growing. Trust that if you fall, you’ll stand back up and try again.

  chapter 17 and you thought trolls lived under bridges

  There’s no denying that this surge in technology has defined our generation and the generations to come. While most baby boomers were skeptical about its sustainability and longevity, the proof is here. There are college classes and courses and majors that not only didn’t apply to prior generations, they didn’t even exist. The digital age has rewritten how products are marketed, how we interact socially, how relationships are built, how information is generated, how we ingest our news, how we share our memories, how we order our food, how we get around, and how we get through virtually all our day-to-day activities. Some may be wistful for a simpler time when meet-cutes weren’t a rarity and libraries were analog. While I can agree that my generation could stand to gain some perspective off a phone screen, I wouldn’t be where I am today without the internet. I also most certainly would not have gotten into college. Or have spelled anything right in this book.

  Now, as Uncle Ben said, with great power comes great responsibility. (Not the Uncle Ben who’s ready to make rice. The Uncle Ben from Spider-Man.) But here’s the issue: we’re all guinea pigs. Not literally, unless it’s taken me so long to write this book that now rodents have opposable thumbs and a fifth-grade reading level. We’re the pioneers and test dummies of this technological age. With any great advancement, there’s a learning curve. Remember the first iPhone? Kinks need to be ironed out and bugs need to be spotted and fixed. And that doesn’t just apply to the hardware of technology. We’ve ended up in completely uncharted waters with the new responsibility it puts on us morally. Every individual has been handed more power at their fingertips than any dictator in history ever had.

  Now, because all of this is so new, there are no rules. There’s no standard or common knowledge on how one should act digitally. We’re the ones teaching our parents how to tweet, Snapchat, and start calling the number sign a hashtag. Suddenly it’s teenagers with the utmost knowledge and information. Back in the day, the biggest fear adults had for their children was whatever debauchery they could get up to on a family landline. If your kids were under your roof, you had a pretty good idea of what they could be up to. But now those options and those fears are endless. I think we all need a crash course on how to internet—not like how to compose something funny and relatable in 160 characters or less, but more along the lines of how to engage and take part in the digital age without being a terrible human headed straight for hell. If the pen is mightier than the sword, then the iPhone is a goddamn bomb.

  The Dos and Don’ts of Navigating the Digital Age Without Being an Asshole

  DO like your friends’ pictures. Regardless of what it’s of. Their morning latte? Like. Their basic flat lay? Like. A blurry drunken selfie? Like. I don’t care if you don’t actually like the picture of their office holiday party; it is your duty as a friend to double tap and do your part in the quest for double digits. The only exception to this rule is an unsightly #tbt in which you are featured. I would never expect you to double tap your own lime-green braces and gauchos.

  DON’T let unsavvy adults stalk your crush on IG on your phone. Do not trust anyone over the age of forty to know how to zoom on Instagram without accidentally liking. Is this offensive? Probably. Is it true? Yes. Do you want to explain to your crush why you were stalking fifty-nine weeks back to a picture of him shirtless at a family reunion at Lake Michigan? No. Or explain to your ex–best friend or your best friend’s ex or your ex’s new lover why you liked a picture of them from the seventh grade? No. Unless you’re doing it on purpose, in which case I’d like to offer you some vinegar for that salt. There are two options here to prevent all of that.

  (a) You could just not stalk that deep, but I’m not familiar with that kind of restraint.

  Or (b) screenshot whatever pictures or posts you want to show around. Now, instead of giving the control of your social media to someone who still refers to an iPhone as a tablet, you’ve given them a picture that they can zoom in on and triple tap on endlessly. Problem solved. Just make sure the picture isn’t sandwiched between your nudes. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

  DO pull a Hannah Montana (or, I guess, more like a Miley Stewart). I’m not expecting you to lead the double life of a part-time pop star (though, if given the option, I totally wouldn’t turn it down). What I mean is: Take inspiration from the alias. Relatable and reference-free, this translates to the simple suggestion of keeping your real last name off your social media profiles. This probably seems ridiculous and unnecessary to you, but let me explain. In a college recruiting assembly at my high school, the counselors informed us that one of the things colleges did in researching prospective students was the same thing we did to research them: Google search. We were shocked. We were under the naive impression that the admissions office would see only the materials we gave them. Less than twenty-four hours later, every senior had changed their last name on Facebook to their middle name, and other more creative (weird) folks chose totally different names altogether. Most of us had intended the swap to be temporary, but as we got into the real world of job applications and background searches, the comfort of knowing the recruiter at a marketing firm couldn’t tie us back to a status from 2009 about our love of DJ Pauly D was something we just couldn’t give up.

  DON’T subtweet. This one I really just don’t get, and not in a high-and-mighty, holier-than-thou kind of way. Mostly just because I’m super-confrontational, and I could never see a passive-aggressive subtweet supplying the same feeling as a direct verbal confrontation. I’m totally not advising that as an alternative, by the way. But come on, subtweeting is not only the slimiest form of perpetuating drama, it blows things way out of proportion and invites public opinion. If something pisses you off enough to subtweet about it, it’s worth hashing out in person. If that’s not doable, then save that shit to drafts and move along.

  DO keep your profile PC. I get it. You turned twenty-one, you drink, you’re cool, you hang out with D-list celebrities’ sisters. That’s awesome. I’m totally stoked for you.

  Does that mean I want to see pictures of you doing lines of coke off dirty pool tables? I’d really rather not. I struggle with thinking that everybody’s social media account should be private, and then knowing that, if that were true, I’d no longer have a job. Plus stalking the guys my friends date would be WAY harder. Obviously, I understand the public profile when you’re building your brand, and I think there are two ways to go about it. If you’re selling woven baskets and tiny spoons on Etsy, make accounts solely for your profession. Not only does this create a work-life balance by separating the two, it also keeps you from being a social pariah because you clog everyone’s feed with rusting cutlery. Now, if your brand is you, that’s a different story. In that case the content you post not only reflects your interests, it’s how you’re perceived professionally. It’s up to you to determine what your brand is, what you want to be known for, and what y
our potential business partners see. If you’re hesitating on uploading something because you’re doing something illegal? Not worth it.

  DON’T be that asshole hiding behind a screen (unless you’re being stalked in a Best Buy, in which case go for the sixty-inchers). One of my favorite things about the internet is that it gives a voice to the voiceless. There is that ambiguity and anonymity of it that can be really positive. It’s like a virtual masquerade ball where we all get dressed up and act like the person we’ve always wanted the courage to be. And while that can breed confidence and allies and open up a world in which you find like-minded people, it doesn’t always end up that way. I mean, if it did, catfish would just be the lunch special. Honestly, in my early years as an internet kid, it really did come from a pure and genuine place. But as the years have gone by, the culture and community seem far less based on acceptance and far more based in negativity and cruelty. Apparently, being anonymous means that you’ve been given this free pass to be a completely terrible person. You can say atrocious things that you’d never in a million years dream of saying to somebody in person. We’re under this impression that freedom of speech essentially translates into saying whatever the fuck you want, and who cares who it hurts, because I certainly don’t, even though I’ve got a Bible verse in my bio saying to love thy neighbor. The justification of these terrible lapses in (or lack of) manners is the self-proclaimed entitlement to one’s own opinion. Which I personally think is fucking insane. Yes, you can have an opinion on things, sure. You can even have an opinion on people, especially if those people are hurting you, or are hurting other people, or have a last name that rhymes with Hump. But except for the last one, why? Like, honestly, why do people care? I’m actually baffled by the fact that so much of the world has so much free time that they’re legitimately dissecting and critiquing other people and their lives. I don’t know what they lecture about in school these days, but back in my Manor Elementary years, it seemed that every day ended with Mr. Tim telling us that if we had nothing nice to say, then we should say nothing at all. I’m not sure when this precept petered out, but I think it’s time we reintroduce it. There is a special place in hell reserved for internet trolls, and I bet you the Wi-Fi sucks there. Think what you want, but I really believe that what goes around comes around. Fifteen years from now, when Becky is sitting alone in the apartment she is about to be evicted from and is wondering why she’s still single, I hope she finally realizes that those long nights of spamming Disney Channel stars with death threats put her where she is today. Don’t be like Becky.