What does SUCCESS look like to you?

There are hiking stories and there are writing stories and there are stories of all sorts that fit somewhere in between but ALL my stories involve the wild swing between the success or failure of a plan.

When stuck inside with the lurgy recently I spent time poring over AllTrails to select hikes for the Flamingoes that will keep us with step counts well over 10,000 into the foreseeable future. I scheduled them in my diary (in pencil, changes might be needed) and downloaded the maps. Ready to go! I scribbled notes and saved ideas with Tallulah for backstories for Smooth Speech, roughing in some general outlines with beginning, middle and end. Some business writing was completed and possible programs drafted for as yet unmet clients (hello, I’m coming!). I didn’t manage to write a shopping list nor clean any part of the house. Weeds were pulled, though no garden bed was completely tidied. I achieved a huge amount from my perspective though not one single plan was actually completed in the fortnight I was on the couch and so my ‘to do’ list remained incomplete. Failed… Or did I?

I started this year with goal setting that veered wildly from my traditional New Year’s Resolution with the intention to collect rejections. In other words, to plan for and celebrate failure. Yes, the exact opposite of success. The 50s Projects took shape out of a drive to capture something with this momentous year, and it needed to feel different from all the goals I’d set before. 

It’s been quite a challenge but not in the ways I had anticipated. I’d expected the emotional sting every time a rejection landed in my email. I was prepared for the bruised ego and even the temporary lag in motivation to write. What I wasn’t prepared for was that by elevating failure to a place of success I relegated any achievement I made to the shadows. Any story I wrote has no status until it is accepted or rejected. No acknowledgement for being written at all. Every outing I take that doesn’t meet the criteria of the hike is demoted to a walk and forgotten immediately.

Umm, that’s a bit silly!

Year 12 exams begin in earnest today. We have been spared that particular angst as our lot have chosen alternative pathways into adulthood. That doesn’t spare them the big questions about ‘what next’? Year 12 is tough when you’re constantly being asked to answer that question. It feels unanswerable. It feels like that’s the only question you’ve got to get right no matter how you’re tested to see whether your thirteen years of schooling was a ‘success’. That’s a lifelong investment that you really don’t want to fail.

Thirteen years in school. Thirteen years of learning and growing and experimenting and, yes, failing AND succeeding along the way. I want to propose a toast to all the achievements, big and small, that were collected in those thirteen years. There are the academic ones – reading and writing and finding out which subjects make your heart sing and which ones you’ll be glad to see the end of. The social ones that taught you how to get along with others; the friends you’ve made along the way, the people who showed you how to manage conflict and the ones who forced you to step up and face the hard things. And the personal achievements. Oh, they’re special and unique to every one of us, sometimes secret and sometimes shared. 

Ian and I are so proud of our three adults. No more kidults, we’ve all graduated! 

It’s widely understood and shared that ‘no-one cares about your year 12 result when you get out into the world’. There’s truth in that but I think the Desiderata has wisdom that is particularly relevant for all of us right now. Enjoy your achievements. There are so many of them, some of them successes and some of them experiences and every single one of them so precious. Well done! …as well as your plans. Dream big. Have a go. Collect failures, for they are proof of a life lived with gusto and curiosity.

We’re so proud of every one of you!!!