how often is it okay to fail before you start to think you're incompetent?

[rnottelovesowls]

time for blue mode, because this is a vulnerable post

i recently read a blog post called "Fail more, coward <3", where author valeria  posits that there is no such thing as a life without failing. but while i agree that no one is perfect, me being autistic means that i gain a low opinion of myself whenever i make mistakes. when i fail, i end up hating myself and thinking "why do i even bother?"

i felt this way after acquiring a CD of a video editor program built for windows 98 (anyone from the shoutbox may remember when i brought it up), only to realize on using it that, of course, its features are stupidly limited. it doesn't even have green-screen or color changing. (you were right when you said video editing wasn't good back in the day, melon...) so i was quite disappointed knowing that i spent $12 on something that i will probably never use. this, on top of several other mistakes i've made through my life and my work, have left me once again thinking "why do i even bother?"

how often is it okay to fail before you start to think you're incompetent? i would appreciate some perspectives on this

EDIT: for those of you wondering why i bought a video editor made for windows 98, it's because i've always been a proponent of "old tech is still worth using today", i wanted a video editor that was simple and not too advanced like davinci resolve, and i was fed up with capcut and all the mobile capcut wannabes with their endless bugs and useless-to-me gen AI features

[lakes]

time for

i felt this way after acquiring a CD of a video editor program built for windows 98 (anyone from the shoutbox may remember when i brought it up), only to realize on using it that, of course, its features are stupidly limited. it doesn't even have green-screen or color changing. (you were right when you said video editing wasn't good back in the day, melon...) so i was quite disappointed knowing that i spent $12 on something that i will probably never use. this, on top of several other mistakes i've made through my life and my work, have left me once again thinking "why do i even bother?"

how often is it okay to fail before you start to think you're incompetent? i would appreciate some perspectives on this

Well, I have this problem too. However there's a lot of times where you fail but it's fixable. Like for example, you can sell this CD for the money you lost & the person you sell it to might be an archivist or upload it to the Internet Archive or maybe they actually enjoy using it while you didn't.

EDIT: for those of you wondering why i bought a video editor made for windows 98, it's because i've always been a proponent of "old tech is still worth using today", i wanted a video editor that was simple and not too advanced like davinci resolve, and i was fed up with capcut and all the mobile capcut wannabes with their endless bugs and useless-to-me gen AI features[/color]

Not to recommend Kdenlive despite not being into video editing, but I heard it's "simpler" than a lot of other video editors, while still being somewhat usable. I'm sure people who actually use video editors might have better recommendations.

[Melooon]

I think if loosing $12 on an interesting, if unsuccessful, experiment is the worst failure you have to write about then you're doing pretty well

You will have far worse failures in life, ones that cost more than a bowl of pasta! The measure of a person is not how much they succeed, but how they recover after they've lost everything; but you have not lost everything, so today is a good day


As for old video editing  There was a quantum leap in PC video editing around 2006, everything from before then is more or less rubbish, complicated, and/or or you needed special hardware for it. The golden age would be 2009 to 2021, that's when they really figured out the software design and the hardware got powerful enough to keep up.

Final Cut Pro X (Mac), Adobe Premier (Mac,Win), Sony Vegas Pro (Win) are all great programs with versions from that era, and if your looking to seriously do some video stuff any will work great and you can find archives of them around ^^

[rnottelovesowls]

I think if loosing $12 on an interesting, if unsuccessful, experiment is the worst failure you have to write about then you're doing pretty well

it wasn't the worst failure of my life; it was just the breaking point. i've made people angry that i never meant to, i've said things i regret, i've bought things that i regretted after, i've lost plants and fish that i thought i was taking good care of, and i've gotten rid of things that i didn't know were important to me. i've made a lot more mistakes in my life than just buying an outdated video editor for 12 bucks. if that was the only huge mistake i'd ever made, then me calling myself incompetent just now would sound more like an overreaction than a legitimate concern. but if that's normally how i react to making mistakes, i don't even want to imagine how i'd react if i truly lost everything...

my biggest concern is, do i even have time to fail? it feels like humanity and the earth are falling apart in real time; what if, by the time i do succeed, it's too late?

(oh, and to both you and lakes: i appreciate the video editor recommendations, but i feel like now that i have this CD, i should at least try to get to know it)

[citizenalex]

I think the whole enterprise of judging one's self as a success or failure is suspect. We are all complex beings with skills, talents, and challenges. We tend to discount the things that go well and focus on the things that don't go well. It's important to remember that we're never in control of outcomes. Things can not go to plan despite good choices. In fact, believing we can control out come is incredibly arrogant. The world is bigger and more powerful than we are. We should always measure effort, not outcome. The most important thing about outcome is what we learned from it so that we can develop skills for the next thing. There is no scorecard. None of us are getting out of this alive. We don't get to take any of it with us. The most important thing is to do what you value, strive to be the kind of person you want to be regardless of what boxes you check off. It's the direction, not the distance that's important. You are (we all are) enough.

[Noah_S]

The most important thing about outcome is what we learned from it so that we can develop skills for the next thing.

I'd go a step further, with the caveat that what I write applies to hobbies and art, not to being a kind person.

I reject the premise of competence and having becoming better at it as a goal. You don't have to be good at it to do art. You don't have to get better at it. We need to relearn doing things just for fun.

I have been informed that my drawing fits into the naive artstyle. I call it the "screw the rules and do what you want" artstyle. I don't enjoy the technical stuff about composition and perspective, so I don't do that.

[citizenalex]

I think that's fair.

[Melooon]

I have been informed that my drawing fits into the naive artstyle. I call it the "screw the rules and do what you want" artstyle. I don't enjoy the technical stuff about composition and perspective, so I don't do that

So I come from a background with a lot of fine art experience and exposure and I'm very used to the professional process of art analysis at a gallery level; and I would like to add something here.

There is a true value is mastering a craft, whatever that craft is; and mastery of a craft does not always mean technical proficiency, particularly in art. There are many very technically proficient artists who can create amazing photo-realistic artworks, that would still never be accepted in a museum quality gallery. I would say the same goes for web-craft too, there are many hyper skilled programmers who can make incredibly advanced, beautifully designed sites, that still have very little artistic or emotional value.

That's the reason why I like supporting personal sites and funky webcrafters, and why I've always advocated for simple broken sites over well planned consistent layouts. When it comes to art, mastery is about being true to oneself, and to your medium, and producing something that really matters to you - and very often the websites that do that best, are the most naive, first timer sites, made by the least experienced programmers.

However that ability to be naive is something that can be mastered, it is a skill you can develop, just like technical skill can. Becoming a great artist is about mastering your craft; its about not being serious, but it is about still taking yourself seriously and respecting what you make while you have fun.

After that, the technical stuff is just a supporting actor, it will develop naturally, and you can work on it too; but its not the point. It really break's my heart when I see a funky first timer site getting redesigned by someone into a bland layout because they've fallen down the technical trap

For you personally, there are fantastic qualities in your art that jumped out to me as soon as I saw your forum account request, (and I say that from a fine art position, not an "Im being a nice indie web person" position ), you're clearly on a path, and if you respect that, and develop what you've got, and don't give into the pressure to be technical while still mastering your style; it's worth it, and you will have fun, and you'll get a lot out of your art and your art life and I really do believe you can do that.

[bodypoetic]

me being autistic means that i gain a low opinion of myself whenever i make mistakes. when i fail, i end up hating myself and thinking "why do i even bother?"

You possibly already know this but I feel it's worth saying. I am reasonably sure that this is not because of autism but because of trauma from growing up autistic. (Disclaimer: there's nuance here, I'm not a psychiatrist, you know yourself best.) This is a distinction worth making because one of these is a fixed part of yourself, and the other is a learned response that can be changed with time and effort and healing. If the word 'trauma' feels overly melodramatic, or otherwise doesn't make sense to you, it doesn't matter, that's not important, this is my key point: THIS CAN CHANGE. It'll take practice like any other skill, but it is possible!

I feel strongly about this because there's a lot in your post that I recognise. I had a tough time connecting with my peers as a kid, but schoolwork was where I felt comfortable and accomplished. So a lot of my self-worth got bound up in academic achievement. So making mistakes or under-performing felt like The Worst Thing Ever.

The thing is: failing just means you failed. That's it. It doesn't mean you're intrinsically incompetent. Even lots of failures isn't a reflection on some fundamental part of you, it just means you're learning as you go, like everybody is.

It feels silly and cringey and woo, but I have had a bit of success with morning affirmations - I've gone for some specifically aimed at masked neurodivergent baggage, including stuff like 'I am allowed to make mistakes' and 'I am enough just as I am'. I gather repetition is the point here, so I'd recommend trying it for at least a month or so, even if it seems like it isn't doing anything at first. (I would probably not recommend the other thing that helped me get over this which was, uh, doing a very demanding degree where they'd throw you in at the deep end and you'd have to say SOMETHING even if you didn't have a clue what to say. That forced me to get okay with getting things wrong very quickly!)

Now I've said that, here's the fun stuff!!!!

Theory can be hard to read if you're not used to it but, at its best, it is a map to make sense of experience. I've learned to love failure (on the good days, anyway) largely by exploring its cultural and political dimensions. Try 'The Queer Art of Failure' by Jack Halberstam! Try some Sara Ahmed! Try 'Glitch Feminism' by Legacy Russell (possibly of interest for web stuff anyhow)! The rough, amalgamated gist is: we live under a system that is hostile to us, and failure to live up to that system's standards is what shows us other ways to live. I think there's something truly beautiful in that, and it helps me have more patience for the smaller failures, too.