Hey babes. It's been a long week of pretending to sort through notes from you guys. I appreciate all of the stories related to my last post. Some of you had some really good suggestions, and the rest landed in prison. Oh well, live and learn, right?
Those notes stirred around in my head for a while and I thought I'd address some of those thoughts in this post. What I got thinking about is how much you risk when doing new things that you may or may not be good at, so I'm going to share those here. Specifically, here are what I think are the pros and cons of trying.
Trying something new, whether an experience or exerting effort, is not to be taken lightly. There are all sorts of cool things that came about because somebody tried something new. I really like sushi—and I wouldn't have known I liked it if somebody at a party hadn't taken the dare to shove a California roll down my throat when I was resting my eyes. That person tried something, and it worked out for me in the end. So sometimes trying things can be good. Like, whoever made my smartphone tried making a smartphone, and they did a pretty good job at it. Maybe for the next model they will make a screen that won't crack after it's dropped from one story, but hey, it was still a good try.
But, a lot of people who are trying to do neat things by trying something may ignore the dark side of trying: they might spend a lot of time and effort and then just fail. Failure is a really unpleasant experience. It may surprise most of you to learn that I have had a little bit of exposure to failure. It's true—when I was in 4th grade, I thought it would be really neat to play the violin. But, I didn't realize that learning to play was hard. I practiced a few times, and I didn't get good at it right away. I was missing all kinds of television shows, and sometimes my friends would call me to talk about hair and outfit ideas, and so you can see how, in that case, it was a no-brainer.
I guess what I'm saying is that trying can be pretty hard sometimes, but not trying is super easy, and frees up all sorts of time and energy for things that you know you're good at. Look at me now: I haven't tried anything new for about 16 months, and so I spend all of my time doing what I have been good at since I was in junior high school—picking cute outfits, getting my nails done, eating take-out, and telling other people what to do.
Don't get me wrong here; I am not telling you that you shouldn't try things. Some people look at failure like it's just part of learning instead of a horrifying look in the mirror to find that you aren't already perfect like you thought. Those people may change the world in ways that were never dreamed of a century ago, but don't forget that sometimes they have a couple of days that are kind of hard when things don't go just right.
No matter what, good luck deciding. Unless, of course, you're not used to deciding things, then maybe ask somebody else what you should do about this "trying" stuff. Don't forget to let me know what you think about trying things.