A Year of Ask a Failure

Thank you for celebrating 52 weeks of foundering and floundering with me.

Louise Bourgeois, Ode a l’Oubli, 2004, fabric collages

Dear Reader,

Holy shit! It’s been a fucking year of Ask a Failure! I won’t start lying to you now: I can’t believe we made it. When I started this project from a small bed in a tiny cabin in Joshua Tree while in the midst of vomiting and shitting myself from an unexplained sickness last Christmas, I thought maybe finally getting this project off the ground was a fever dream. This right here is the 52nd time I showed up for Ask a Failure. That’s 52 weeks! Granted, this week I am late, which feels appropriate for this project, but give me a break—I spent over 30 hours late last week driving with my dog and cat from Oklahoma to Pennsylvania in a historical winter storm the day after I got eyelid surgery. I know, so dramatic. Also, I completely lost track of what day it is amidst recovering from surviving the Arctic War of 2022. What are days anyways, like really?

During the drive, I asked my ancestors, particularly my great-grandmother Mary Malloy to keep me safe because my work here is not done. Whilst stuck in the middle of Missouri for three hours due to an accident between three semi-trucks and three trucks and an RV, I twisted what was once her wedding ring that’s engraved with her initials around my ring finger. I often wear it on my right hand when I’m doing something that scares me or for which I need support that’s not immediately available, at least not in any way that I can perceive in the material world. I promised her that if she got me back to Pittsburgh safely, I would continue to dare to be fully myself, even when that means rejection from my family and those whom I wish could mutually love me. I also promised I would continue what I committed to with this project: I have a lot more failing and fucking up to do before I’m ready to throw in the towel on this current incarnation of my existence.

I was uncertain if I’d be able to show up for this project in the way I dreamed of this past year while traveling, looking for a new home, and working a full-time job among a part-time job and freelance work. Sometimes I sat down to work on Ask a Failure with an idea I’d been thinking about for months or years or a topic I’d been wanting to sit with for some time and the project was an opportunity to finally do so. Sometimes I sat down with no fucking idea of what would come after a week of barely keeping my head above water and the challenge was to write as honestly and openly as I could with whatever I had left in the tank even if I only had time to do that at 1 in the morning and even if I knew it wouldn’t be my best writing or maybe I’d look back and see everything I could have done better if I had a bit more time or energy or skill or talent.

But perfection has never been the point of any of this. The point of this (if there is a point? lolol) was to challenge myself to be openly and fully imperfect in my craft and in my ideas and in my ability and to support myself through everything that came up around that and through that process. The point was to connect more deeply with myself, with my friends who might read this, and with the eventual strangers and now friends in spirit from afar who have come to read this missive somehow, and to celebrate whatever comes, as it comes, and to fully feel and revel in that being enough.

This week I wanted to take some time to reflect on this past year and to also let you know that Ask a Failure will continue in some way beyond this year (I think, I’d like, I hope), but I will be taking the month of January off to get back to Oklahoma and to take some quiet time, as much as I can, away from screens to rest and reevaluate and scheme. With some space, I’m curious to see what emerges as the next set of challenges that might feel scary to try this next year. I have some ideas I’ve been sitting with as the year has gone on, but I want time to consider how best to approach these dreams and to do what I can to create more of the kind of things and spaces and energy I’d like to experience and share in the world throughout this coming year.

In the meantime, I thought it might be fun and silly and a little scary to look back on this year of failure at the posts you read the most and my personal favorites either so you can catch up on ones you missed and would like to revisit now, or for new readers, you can explore some highlights of this past year of failure as Failure and I take a much needed new year rest.