Failure

I am not good at failing.

It's no secret to anyone who knows me that I hate to lose. I am competitive by nature. This drives my wife crazy because I need to win. Adversaries make me work hard, and their doubt makes me work harder.

"I like the idea, but you have failed in the execution," my owner told me as I served him a dish that Chef and I worked tirelessly on.

It was a bit of a shock to me; I'm not used to failure. It was the certainty of the word "failure" that really hit me. He didn't suggest it needed to be tweaked. He didn't say "It's ok, but I don't love it." He told me I failed.

And he was right.

It took me a bit of time to really surrender to that realization, but once I did, I found myself almost relieved. As the General Manager of Mate Lounge, it is my charge to come out with a brand new food and drink menu for the fall. This, for those of you who don't know, is a daunting task.

The owner of the Lounge asked me if I had read his blog, which I had. It's appropriately called "I Love Failure" and it turned out that his use of the dreaded "F" word was far more honest than I was expecting or prepared for.

It is not often that you get to speak with someone who has succeeded (and failed, as it turns out) in so many ventures in his life. I assume that he saw me go tight-lipped and stopped and said "Now that you know you have failed, try something different."

I share this because of the importance of persistence in these little moments. Creative pursuits such as food and drink are beset on all sides with traps that you can fall into, and losing sight that sometimes everyone doesn't share the quirks of your pallet is a dangerous game. Sometimes you just have to let go.

So, I kept working. And Mate's new food and drink menu is dangerously close to being done.

Thomas Edison, besides being a thief and a bit of a fraud (See: The Oatmeal Comic on Tesla and how Edison stole his ideas....) did say something I find very useful:

"I have not failed 10,000 times. I have successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work."

Don't be afraid to fail. It doesn't hurt as bad as it seems.