Let’s talk about failure.

There’s this common accusation that social media is harmful because we all retouch our lives so much on it. We only share the good, and then we compare our dreary day-to-day with other people’s highlight reels, and we feel less than. None of it is real.

From a whole different angle, there’s the perception that we don’t have a proper “culture of failing” in Austria or Europe, that if failure were more accepted like it is in Silicon Valley, people wouldn’t be so risk-averse and our economy would be much more innovative.

So let’s talk about failure.

I completely, utterly, entirely fucked up my first month of 2017.

I started a new job on day 2, after which I took a completely unplanned and unnecessary 4 day vacation (to Germany, of all places, which is just as cold as here), during which I could’ve gotten things done.

I then failed my practical driving exam for the second time, at which point I decided to cut my losses and just quit, which means that over the past year, I threw out €4.000 for absolutely nothing.

Then, I got sick and had to stay home for a few days. I handed in half-hearted, embarrassingly bad assignments. I spent time that I should’ve spent studying crying my eyes out. My panic attacks came right back and messed my schedule up so badly. And I sat through them, because I have learned that trying to force myself to calm down makes everything worse.

At various points this month, I seriously considered moving to a different country, taking out a loan and getting a ton of plastic surgery, giving away my cat, getting a house on the countryside, and joining a religious cult.

I spent hours just reading, and writing, and crying, when I should have been working on my task list. I didn’t do close to my best on any of my exams, or assignments, and sometimes I didn’t even do my best at work. I went to the gym a total of maybe three times in the entire month. I did count calories, but any deficit I racked up was shot right to hell this past week – anyone who has ever struggled with this knows how incredibly hard it is to function, let alone perform, while restricting.

By almost every one of my own measures, I failed.

But I managed to complete eight university courses this month alone, alongside a 35 hour work week. The standards I set myself are a lot higher than that, and I’m going to try a hell of a lot harder next month. 

But for now, that’s going to have to be enough.