Markus Seidel

Fail better!

A guide to successful failure

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Inhaltsverzeichnis

Titel

After failure, the real fun begins!

My own failure (and what became of it)

Everyone fails - every day!

The thick skin

Turn defeats into victories

Reasons for failure

The dark clouds on the horizon

Allow! Let it happen!

Of right and wrong questions

Conclusion

Fine words for failure

Celebrities successful Failed

Impressum neobooks

After failure, the real fun begins!

Failure is no fun. Anyone who claims otherwise is lying or his failure is a little bit longer ago and he has long since basked in new success. Because then it's a little easier to romanticize the former defeat.

But it's also a fact: Victory is even more fun if you've suffered a failure before. But until then you have to take a lot of punishment. Those who fail are often stigmatized as the one "who didn't make it". And to live with such a stigma and not to let it get you down is often difficult (see the chapter "The thick skin"). A "culture of failure and second chances" is not yet too strongly developed in this country, unlike in the USA, for example. To consider failure as a productive part of learning, this apparently only applies to children, for example when they learn to swim or walk - they simply practice it until they can. For adults, however, the principle of "trial and error" is hardly accepted. This is wrong.

A rethink is necessary, and perhaps something is gradually happening in this respect: At the moment, the so-called "FuckUp Nights", which take place everywhere and where people get on a stage and talk about their failure, are very popular. You can think what you want about it, but I'm sure that these events take away the fear of failure at least a little bit. And in the best case they learn from the mistakes of those who stand there on stage. That is quite a lot, I mean.

That's why I now also put myself on the (literary) stage and tell you about my very own pile of failures, which ultimately served me as a basis for something new.

My own failure (and what became of it)

At four in the morning my alarm clock rang. At half past five I had to be in the port of Hamburg, then it was time to go: container loads had to be loaded or unloaded, a very sweaty and also badly paid job. Once I was busy unloading TV sets for three or four hours - rarely in my life have I sweated more than at this work (and I was a competitive athlete for a long time).

I was 34 years old, had a high school diploma, completed training as a bookseller, had a master's degree in German studies in Hanover, Vienna and Berlin, had written literary criticism for various daily newspapers during my studies and had worked as an editor in a publishing house, had written five novels in the six years before, two of which had sold quite well (about 14,000 copies each), had received a prestigious literary prize, had taken part in many readings and had written essays and short stories for newspapers. I was in conversation.

And then this: my publisher rejected my new book (the last two books hadn't sold well), my agent couldn't find another publisher for the manuscript, the newspapers lost interest in my contributions, and even magazines stopped talking about me. In short: That was it for now. The whole thing happened within a year, bit by bit the ground had broken from under my feet.

From then on I applied for a job in bookstores, after all I had learned to be a bookseller, but without success, nobody hired me. When I was travelling, I always had all the necessary documents with me to introduce myself spontaneously in a bookstore, but it didn't help. I gave tuition, first for German, then English, finally for almost everything. Soon after, my girlfriend and I separated; I took over the cat, because her new boyfriend was allergic to her hair. Two years earlier I had toyed with the idea of starting a doctoral thesis, my former professor was immediately taken with the idea, but I finally gave it up in favour of a new book I wanted to write (but which nobody wanted to have, see above).

My new one-room apartment, which I took over from a student for whom it was too shabby, was directly above that of a Messiah, already in the hallway it stank terribly, but I couldn't afford more for the time being. I borrowed money from my parents, they were worried about me and my future, so was I. I was 34 years old and quite exhausted. My head was empty. I was exhausted. I had trouble sleeping. Now I was out of conversation. More like I was talking.

What else I had: the cat I was attached to, a course at the adult education centre in literature that I gave and where nobody knew how humble it was going for me, and my tutoring students who needed me. Of course I needed them too. They were my only real source of money besides the work in the harbour. With both, there was just enough for the apartment and for some food.

What I did not give up: Swim training two or three times a week. And I never gave up on myself completely, even though I was often terribly desperate. I thought (hoped) I would think of something.

But how should it go on? In any case (harbour, tutoring) it would not work in the long run, that much was clear to me. Many of my colleagues in the port, who had been working here for a long time, were physically worn out, looked at least ten years older than they were, many drank, all smoked. I was still running on autopilot, I was embarrassed for my apartment, almost nobody but me and the cat ever entered it.

I remained alert to everything; somewhere, I thought, there is a new way for me. There always is, at least I was convinced of it. Now I first had to go this way here, which led me daily at the crack of dawn to the harbour and on which I dragged myself back home in the afternoon. By the way, when I was asked then what I was doing now, I answered truthfully and not without pride: I work in the harbour!

One day my mother told me about a young woman she had recently seen on television. This woman wrote love letters for people who needed something like that but couldn't write. That's how she earned her money.

Now I didn't really want to write love letters, but I could write, for example novels and short stories, advertising texts, autobiographies. I had a computer (of course), I had an apartment (awful), a desk, a chair. This was my office. And I had a new girlfriend whom I had met at the swimming club and who, although she didn't know my apartment, knew that, unlike herself, I wasn't exactly in the fast lane at the moment; it was not least thanks to her that I got new momentum. I searched the internet for a web designer, found one who had just started his own business and whose prices were quite okay. He made me my website, which was affordable not least because he designed it exactly the same way as his own site.

The ball gradually started rolling, it was like a gold-digger mood in me. Hermann Hesse says that every beginning has a magic within it, and I felt this magic, the gold-digger mood, clearly at that time. Everything in the beginning. I was sure it would work. And if not - what could I lose except the money I had invested in the web designer?

It didn't take long until I had my first client, an engineer from the Ruhr area, who wanted to write a novel with my help. With the fee I paid the rent for my apartment. With the fees of the next clients (for example a dentist who needed new texts for his website) I was able to join a building cooperative, pay the corresponding deposit and move into a new apartment soon afterwards.

Things were looking up, and rarely in my life have I been so proud as I was at that time. I had made it; I was free again. I didn't go into the harbour any more.

The ball rolled and I had and still have enough strength and creativity to keep it running until today (although it sometimes loses speed, but it never stops or gets stuck anywhere).

By the way, sometimes I too run the risk of romanticizing the times of yore.