Returning Back to Failure

About roughly 2-3 weeks ago I had this idea about writing a story regarding the food carts surrounding my college campus. I was going to write profiles of each of them so that the student body could better know the men and women on campus that serve hundreds every day. I was even going to test out my photography skills and have my photos be in the college paper.

I brought it up to the editors of my paper and they liked it, so I was good on all fronts. I put it on my planner and was ready to go out there and kick-ass. I even put the project in incremental steps so that I wouldn't have to worry about being overwhelmed. However, for some reason, I was getting it started. Days passed where the objective of getting started on the story was adjacent to an X in my planner meaning that I didn't do it. Over time I gave up on the story and decided to write something else that I got done pretty handily.

Fast forward to last Saturday when I was reading Mark Manson's The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck and there was a chapter regarding embracing doing difficult things. Now this is a lesson that I've read about before and definitely knew about. Yet somehow I had forgotten it. After reading the book I had to wash the dishes and it was during that monotonous task that it hit me " I was running away from the project."But why though? It's not like someone had forced me to do it. It was something that I had volunteered to do. Over the course of this dishwashing session it began to dawn on me the reason why For one , I would have to speak to strangers that I didn't know and ask them for an interview. Second , I would have to deal with the very real possibility of me being rejected for an interview and the idea just not coming to fruition  . And within the second reason lies why I had refused to do it. Because I didn't want to put up with the fact that my amazing idea might get smacked down to oblivion.Moreover, the current articles that I wrote for my paper were comfortable enough and didn't necessarily push me out of my comfort zone. By now I'm fine with emailing professors and  asking them questions. Going up to strangers however is a whole different ball game.

I realised this on Sunday , and resolved to fix it on Monday.

On Sunday I moseyed on down to the Halal Cart and asked the nice man if I could write an article about him . I gave him my pitch . He smiled. He said no. Well he said more than " no " . He explained that while he would love to , the cart wasn't his and even something like the article might have needed to go through his employer.

I was bummed. But that bummed energy gave way to a small fountain of happiness. I was in fact right in my fears in the sense that I did get rejected. However, I was wrong in the sense that I ough to flee from rejection. Being told no by him kind of ripped off the band-aid on my nervousness over asking strangers either questions or an interview. It was an overall positive and I am very thankful for that. I made a U-Turn and landed on Failure Street but then again , it's a necessary part of getting to Success Boulevard.