Your thing bombed.
That project you poured your soul into? Crickets.
That post you thought was brilliant? Tumbleweeds.
That creative risk you finally worked up the courage to take? It blew up in your face and now you don’t want to risk anything anymore.
Your anxiety is telling you this means something catastrophic about your worth as a human being. Your anxiety is wrong.
Your anxiety is also probably telling you that everyone noticed, everyone remembers, and everyone is judging you for this spectacular failure.
Your anxiety is wrong about that too.
You tried something. It didn’t work. The world kept spinning. Netflix still has new episodes. Your local bakery still makes decent cake.
You’re still breathing, which means you get another shot.
But before you step up to the plate and take another swing at it, have some fucking cake.
Not because you deserve to wallow or because failure should be rewarded with sugar.
It’s mainly cause your nervous system is currently convinced you’re being chased by a saber tooth tiger or some shit, and sometimes the fastest way to convince your brain that you’re safe is to do something that feels safe and normal and pleasantly mundane.
Cake is mundane. Cake is safe. Cake doesn’t judge your creative choices or analyse your engagement metrics.
Eat the cake. Watch something stupid on TV. Pet a dog if you have access to one. Let your cortisol levels return to something resembling normal before you start the post mortem analysis.
Failure is nothing but data. It’s not written in stone that you’re gonna be a failure forever.
That thing that bombed? It’s telling you something useful about your audience, your timing, your execution, or your assumptions.
But it’s not telling you to quit. It’s not telling you that you suck. It’s not telling you that you should go get a sensible job and never try anything creative again.
It’s telling you to try differently next time.
Maybe your timing was shit. Maybe your delivery needed work. Maybe it was actually good but the algorithm gods decided to punish you for reasons known only to them and Mark Zuckerberg’s data scientists.
All of these are solvable problems. None of them are character defects.
Every writer you admire has a graveyard of pieces that went nowhere.
Every artist you follow has posted content that fell flat.
Every entrepreneur you respect has launched products that nobody wanted.
The difference is they didn’t interpret failure as proof that they should stop trying.
They interpreted it as proof that they were brave enough to risk failure.
Which is the only way anything good ever gets created.
Your spectacular bomb is actually evidence that you’re doing something right. You took a risk. You put yourself out there. You created something that could fail, which means you created something that could also succeed.
Most people never get to experience spectacular failure because they never try anything spectacular. They play it so safe that failure is impossible. So is breakthrough success though.
You’re in the arena. That matters more than winning every fight.
So eat your cake. Feel your feelings. Let yourself be disappointed for a hot minute. That’s normal and a lot more healthy, than giving up forever.
And when you’re ready to take a swing at it again. That’s when you step up to the plate.
Round two is where the magic happens. Round two is where you apply everything you learned from round one. Round two is where you show up with better data, clearer intentions, and the hard earned knowledge that failure won’t actually kill you.
The world needs whatever weird, risky, potentially spectacular thing you’re going to try next.
Even if that also bombs.
Just don’t ever give up.
Stephen Walker.
(I write this as I’m busy trying a pencil drawing on my iPad and it doesn’t feel or look like actual pencil, but I’m stubborn enough to stick with it until it comes out half decent. Even if I want to smash it against the wall)