VISA. It’s Everywhere You Want to Be.
17 Feb 2010 1 Comment
in Inspiration, Running
Warning: Reader, beware. Sappy post to follow.
********************************************
If you’ve watched any Olympic coverage, chances are you’ve seen the VISA commercials. Narrated by Morgan Freeman, these commercials are designed to inspire. Well, let’s be honest, they’re designed to inspire you to whip out that plastic and use it. But, all marketing lessons aside, I’ve come to stop the DVR fastforward every time a specific one comes on: the Dan Jansen commercial. As corny as it sounds, I’m not afraid to admit that this commercial causes me to tear up. Every. single. time.
Dan Jansen won a Gold medal in speed skating in 1994. His road to the podium wasn’t easy, and I’m sure most Olympic athletes share the same sentiment. I was young when he made his first attempt and fell, so I’m not sure if I saw it on TV or not, but I do know I saw him win gold in 1994. I stood in front of my parents’ TV, crying. I was just so happy for someone who had seemed to work so hard.
Tonight I started a running class, designed specifically for women and for beginner runners. As we ran our first mile, my chest cavity started to ache from all that wheezing and breathing I was trying to do. To Olympic athletes, what I ran tonight would be a breeze. To me, it was as elusive as their conquests for gold. But somewhere into the third lap, I thought to myself, “This is how you accomplish something. You take one more step.” Pretty soon one more step becomes one more lap. And one more lap becomes one more mile. And one day, I’ll cross the finish line on the race I’ve always wanted to run.
The Benefits of Failure
05 Feb 2010 Leave a Comment
in Inspiration
As a rookie fiction writer, I’m constantly looking for inspiration and guidance from all those awesome authors who have been there and already done that. I frequently visit the Web sites of my favorite authors, and I reread their thoughts about writing and their stories of how they went from idea to novel. In some rare, but great cases, I find video interviews that I can replay. While it would be amazing to meet all of these great authors in person, I do have a day job and chores and, well, unfortunately, not an unlimited travel budget. I recently discovered a talk J.K. Rowling gave for a Harvard Commencement ceremony. While I must confess that I have not read the entire Harry Potter series, I have read enough to know that Rowling knows her way around fiction. And while I intend to explore other genres and want to find my own style, I found her talk very comforting as I try to write more and daydream less about writing. Because I’ve linked to the video, I won’t spend much time here retelling what she said; her jokes are much better given by her, but the one main takeaway I heard was this: failure has benefits.
I think I’ve always thought failure just had lessons–as in “Uh, self, you failed. How about not trying that again?” But Rowling put it another way. In fact, she talks about failure in a way I’ve never really thought about it before. Last year I found myself in many situations that just didn’t make sense to me. Not that I didn’t have some happy times, but overall, I felt like most of what I did wasn’t measuring up to what I had hoped for, had worked hard to accomplish. I spent most of the year disappointed because my life just didn’t seem to “be working out.” After hearing Rowling’s talk, I realized…for all my failures last year, I gained some extraordinary benefits. The first and foremost being that I realized I needed to give myself real space and time to write whatever I want. And while I’m still working on this goal, still quieting the voices within me that pull me in other directions, or the ego that says, “why bother?” I’m reminded: if all those other endeavors had gone really well, I wouldn’t be here. And you can bet I wouldn’t be writing. And that would be without serious benefit.
–Whitney
