The Many Flavours of failure

It’s like the ice cream flavour you hate but end up eating when you don’t have any other option. You know you don’t like the flavour, and it will not sit well, but you keep licking anyway. That failure flavour is ‘self-inflicted and deliberate’.  Yesterday, I pitched a little fit at the world around me and as a symbol of my childish rage, I lashed out. How did I lash out? Why, by failing on purpose, of course. I decided to not write the chapter I had due yesterday, just to spite myself. It’s the way I like to punish the world, by making it watch me kick the crap out of myself.  Did I feel better? No. I have lost the taste for controlled failure.

Sure, sabotaging yourself is appealing. It means your failures never really bother you that much, because you sank your own boat on purpose. There’s no ego loss from a failure like that.

Contrast it with failing after putting forth a real, honest effort. This is something I have historically avoided, but as a part of slowly becoming an actual adult, I have embraced the concept of trying hard and accepting honest failure. I discovered today that I don’t like the taste of that either.

This failure was an emotionally complicated one.  Max was dead-set against going to preschool today, or even leaving the house for that matter, so I was faced with the unpleasant task of dragging him against his wishes to school. To set the emotional stage for this drama, keep in mind that we have just emerged from a 3 day stretch of snow days, where his mom has been home, and things have been topsy-turvy and without any pattern. The day after a weekend is traditionally me and the boy’s stay-at-home day, where he cocoons and gets his bearings. This is what he wanted to do today, so the idea of going off to school and being a brave independent boy was very upsetting to him. I soldiered on through the 20 minutes of near hysterical crying while we got ready, promising him rewards and fun after school. Even the prospect of seeing his best friend at school didn’t help at all.

On the drive over, he calmed down and burst back into tears at least three times, and after one last attempt at convincing him to play and have fun in the classroom, I gave up. It broke my heart to push him to that point, but I kept telling myself that it’s a normal parent thing to do. I had set an unrealistic goal for myself and him, and when I hit resistance, I kept trying instead of folding right away. I should be proud of being gently persistent, and stopping when it was appropriate, but I hate the feeling of coming up short after trying my best. Yet another emotional situation that I have to learn to handle, how to cope with a hard-earned defeat. Oh well. The postscript to the story is that the little dude calmed down and had a great day after the school attempt. That’s good enough for now. We’ll tackle next week’s schooling later.

That is a lot of snow

We’re deep under about 105 cm of snow here (41 inches for anyone not rolling with the metric system, half a fathom for the sailors in the crowd). The joking around about the snowpocalypse or snowmageddon loses some of the hilarity by day 3. Things look like they’re calming down now, but good grief there is a lot of snow in the yard.

As I predicted, the boy is crazy for the white  stuff. He’s averaged 2 hours a  day outside the last two days, at least knee-deep at all times. Other than the occasional retrieval from the deeper piles of snow or a little help to wipe some snow from  his face, he was content tumbling around and adventuring. As a disclaimer, I watched this through the window while my dear wife frolicked with him. But I did fill the other parental role as the provider of delicious hot cocoa and a good warm lunch.

It’s all a part of the partnership. You divvy up the activities based on who is more suited or interested in doing it, and the other  parent takes the auxiliary support role. I need to keep in mind that there is a lot to be said for doing some of these activities as a whole family, even if I don’t particularly like it. Sometimes I gotta take a little cold for the team.

 

 

I do drone on and on

The endless march towards more content continues unabated, and I drag you unlucky few along with me. Oh the grim misery of the dedicated reader when they are fed on nothing but the thinnest of word gruel. No bon mots, no real wisdom, only a tired old crank belly aching about money and repeating himself. You can really taste the sadness.

In the world of the boy, things are pretty much steady. It looks like the ‘landing on his mouth’ incident did do some permanent damage to at least one tooth. It has turned a little grey, and that means the nerves and blood vessels inside have gone to heaven. I really wanted to avoid another trip to the dentist with him, but a professional must judge his malady and make their dread pronouncement. From the research I’ve done, they’ll probably leave the tooth as is, unless it’s infected or causing him pain. I hope it stays in place.

With the pile of snow that fell today, I’m back to my wintertime dilemma. I know the lad loves to play outside in the snow, but I loathe the cold. I hate the wind more than I hate plain old cold, and both at the same time sends me into fits of helpless rage. I will do my best to screw up my courage and get him out and about during the week, but baby it’s cold outside. I should go out and find a snowsuit for the wife so she is more equipped for outdoor frolicking than I am, naturally making her the first choice.

Here’s a little bit of wisdom that I’m trying on for size: If you can’t look back fondly on the fun you had last night, then it probably wasn’t worth your time. I woke up Saturday to a wild and crazy boy and exhausted mom, so our normal plans for the day went out the window. I was also already tired from not sleeping well and being out the night before, so the day was a bit of a drag. When I thought about the reasons for my sour mood, I could not comfort myself by saying ‘I may have stayed out too late, but I sure had fun’ because I didn’t have any. There were moments of near-fun, and I did eat almost an entire big bag of chips by myself, but fattening myself up does not a refreshing evening make. It’ll be the last time I go do that.

The strange thing about fun right now is that  I find myself at the end of the day with a small window of leisure time and nothing to do. I don’t have any games to play, or books to read (though that’s only my own fault. Must go to library soon). It’s frustrating to flip from activity to activity trying to enjoy myself. Maybe this is a consequence of pushing myself to be more productive. Naw, probably just need a new game.