An Important Life Lesson on Failure

I’m back, baby.

After a mentally exhausting weekend, I’m refueled and ready to stroll around the Dorky World of Data. Hope I haven’t missed much.

Anyway, my last two blog posts in this challenge have been absolutely terrible. Like worse than most data projects (if ykyk).

But that’s okay.

I’m back, so let me explain what happened these last few days.

Last week was my last week of work at my old job. Combine that with beginning to run every day, and you’ve got a data dork who comes home every night looking like a zombie. I barely slept last week. I overworked myself and prayed for nothing but rest during the weekend.

But that didn’t happen.

I went out Friday night to hang out with some friends. Long story short, I didn’t go to bed until almost 2 a.m. But that’s fine because I had all of Saturday to rest…

Just kidding.

I woke up around 11 a.m. on Saturday but had to head into the city for a rooftop hangout with some friends. I was a busy guy over the weekend (if only it were always like that haha).

By the time I got home on Saturday, it was almost 11 p.m. and I had no intention of writing my daily blog post. I thought about it but decided not to. Since I had a cool idea, I figured I’d write it on Sunday.

Then Sunday hit, and things didn’t go as planned.

After the long week/weekend, I couldn’t write. My mind was fried, and I had a bit of forearm pain, so typing didn’t go well.

Rather than forcing myself to write a bad blog post, I wrote nothing. Absolutely nothing insightful, funny, or entertaining.

Here’s why I’m telling you all of this (even though it doesn’t sound math or programming related)...

When I started this challenge, I said I’d never skip a day of writing. 66 days in a row was the goal. But 54 days in, I failed.

Big time failure over here.

But guess what…

I’m not punishing myself for missing the last two days. I’m congratulating myself. Why? Because life is never perfect.

You’re destined to fail and perform below average every once in a while.

And I don’t want to be a data pessimist.

Rather than see this as a failure, I see it as an accomplishment.

I mean, yeah, I didn’t write perfectly for 66 days in a row. But I did do it for 54 days in a row. That’s 54 days more than I would have done without this challenge.

Think about it…

What’s better? Writing for 54 days in a row and missing one? Or never writing at all?

Your data career is gonna be the same.

Sometimes, things will go your way. And other times, life is gonna try to choke you out. Don’t allow life to let you down.

Stay optimistic.