Hello, Failure! Thanks for joining us.

I’m Bowie Rowan (aka Failure), and I’m a multimedia storyteller, designer, and researcher currently wandering around what is commonly regarded as the United States of America during this Anthropocene Epoch in which we find ourselves on the planet known as Earth. Currently, I am based in Tulsa, Oklahoma!

Why you? Why do you insist on identifying as a loser?

I have what some might describe as a perverse relationship with failure in that I love it! I live for it! I bathe in it! I evangelize it! I eat failures like you for breakfast (har har)!

No, but seriously, failure has captivated my imagination for the past decade since living a creative life requires a lot of it, so I finally decided I want to express what I’ve learned and am learning and what I love about failure and the failures of the world.

This space is an offering for you to explore and learn and fail along with me. I hope we can build a community of curious misfits who aren’t afraid to strive for more and defy the norms through what we learn from personal, national, global, cosmic, psychic, spiritual, and material failures. Most importantly, let’s have some fun along the way.

As far as my other qualifications, I received my PhD in Failure Studies at Stanford University where I also received the Failure Fellowship awarded to doctoral candidates who show the most promise for failure.

Sike! I have zero qualifications to write about failure outside of being a person who has proudly failed quite a lot at human endeavors. I like to write and make things and I think writing and making things with curiosity and openness and sharing them makes this planet a slightly more tolerable and loving place to exist together.

Hmmm, but like, why subscribe?

If you subscribe to Ask a Failure, you’ll receive new posts from me directly to your inbox. If you become a paid subscriber, you’ll have access to the Ask a Failure archives. Who knows where we’ll go when Failure’s in charge, but you can most likely expect us to bask in the indignities, lessons, and hope found in the following:

fiascos, gold bricks, disasters, wasters, plot twists, losers, lemons, lazybones, flops, rascals, misfires, underachievers, collapses, black sheep, defeats, slugabeds, snafus, and ne’er-do-wells ET CETERA!

Are you excited? I am! Let’s get to it.

Love,
Failure

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A place for those obsessed with living a creative life & persisting despite the horrors. Part advice column. Part cultural criticism. Fully in process 👀

People

Multimedia storyteller, designer, researcher, and snail trying to stay alive and live a creative life on planet Earth. See my work at bowierowan.com.