on pissing over the moon

and soggy self de-feat

I’ve been terrified my whole life. Rejection and failure are scary.

Even worse?

The idea of being somehow successful.

That’s really scary.

So what do I do?

I set impossible goals - like earning a living for my family by selling a light hearted clown show about death to the families of ten year olds.

Sure, I could have done a simple, didactic show about ‘bullying’ or accepting others. But this fool? Let’s get teachers and student talking about the big, existential questions.

I was begging for failure.

That’s the problem, set the goal of pissing over the moon and the best you’ll likely end up with are a couple of wet feet.

In The Practice, Seth Godin outlines 45 ways we sacrifice our work to fear. It’s a clarion call to end perfectionism.

The reason(s) so many people get stuck are outlined there.

They can be captured in a single word: Perfectionism.

In young men I see this all of the time. Rarely does it get expressed through the kind of willful, bumbling, passionate efforts of Bob Bob’s Burge…