Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat. ~F. Scott Fitzgerald

Stumbling through the world we find our place. It can be at a table, desk or it could be standing all day waiting tables; either way, we’re finding.

Through our stumbling and our constant search, we may come to an impasse, a place where everything has fallen down around us and we discover that we’re stronger than we believed, or that we may be lost in a cycle of failure.

Failure is normal, and regardless of what your parents say, failure is good, we can learn from failure.

In failure we can find the things we’ve done wrong previously. We can discover far off discontent that we never knew existed. But only through the times we fail can this come to fruition.

Falling on our faces, dirt in our ears, sand caked in our hair, that is the failure which brings about the change we need for ourselves.

We’ve entered the time when our life or writing are the lifeblood of our souls.

Life-blood, that’s a hell of a thing. It’s the thing which drives us, pushes us and makes us commit to the life of a writer, the long nights, dreary weekends stuck in the house and the celebratory days when we get published.

Our life-blood pours through us, it connects us to each other and makes us strive to write better through the failures, through the droughts of lost words and at the end of it, we discover.

In this discovery, we find ourselves, not the failures we thought we were, and certainly not the people our parents believe us to be.

It’s not our failures which are added up, but our successes.