Im not sure how many people around here still follow Tucker Max, but I subscribed to his new blog a while ago, so I get email updates on new blog posts. I thought the newest one was an interesting read. The TL;DR of it is self-reflection sprinkled with self-deprecation, including his hind-sight perspective on the failure of the movie. As we all know, TiB exists as its current self today because his movie failed so badly that he cratered the message board and subsequently, much of his fan base. But I thought this post, and posts in general on his new site have been interesting. Learning from failure is hard because introspection isnt easy, and is sometimes too much for some people. I've seen it in my father in law who was a piece of shit earlier in life and has spent the last 15 years trying to make up for it. In my own life I've tried to learn from failures as much as I can, with mixed results. Focus: How have you learned from your past failures? Alt Focus: What failures are you still repeating that you cant break the cycle of? Alt Alt Focus: What people in your life do you wish could break the cycle of failure?
I couldn't make it through all that introspective masturbation, but reading the first post in the series about founding a company that folded within a year over and over was pretty funny. A decent (not great) writer Tucker definitely was, but a brilliant business man and revolutionizing entrepreneur he is certainly not. I guess he really is out of things to write about, as he seems so focused on this life advice category I can't see people reading. At least not anywhere near the popularity of his drunken exploits. Most of my own failures involve avoiding dealing with parts of a problem (career, relationship, saving, anything really) I hated. I'd focus on the parts I liked and kept pushing off or entirely ignoring the parts I disliked. Now, I try to do them first or at least make an effort to address them. I'm still guilty of speaking before I think and it screws me over all the time. This should be a relatively simple concept for an adult, but I can't break the habit. I also say what I actually think when I either need to shut the hell up, or sugar coat it. Choosing my words carefully definitely hasn't been my strong suit. Of course there's lots of embarrassing stories behind this, but that's a long post I'll skip for now.
Alt Alt Focus: I know for the many armchair psychologists that this is fertile material but I really wish my parents would get their shit together. Of course I am defining their failures by their addictions, but the consequences of their actions is just a cycle which does not stop. It is the hardest fucking thing to bear witness to because no matter what I say (despite that I am in healthcare) there is no change in their actions. More than once my wife has told me that she does not know how I ended up the way I am because based on where I came from and what my support "network" was, I shouldn't be here. She is not referring to physical or sexual abuse, FYI. The problem for me is this: They refuse to change their behaviors despite family member making comments, yet their behavior has caused a lot of pain/distress. The reason I don't cut them out is because then I would be disowning my parents and I can't bring myself to do that. I can't walk away, yet I can't stare into the abyss.
FOCUS: I don't drink and drive anymore. ALT. FOCUS: I still drink. ALT. ALT. FOCUS: I'm really disappointed that my brother got back on cocaine after 13 years of prison (he got there for bank robberies to support his cocaine habit), and robbed my dad and me. I had the highest hopes for him when he came out, but he used my ID and checks to drain my bank account, and maxed out my credit cards. He tried the same thing on my dad, but my dad caught on fast; I was in prison when all of this happened, and I didn't find out about it until I got home. My brother is scheduled to get out of prison (for those crimes) in 2018, and I hope he can stay clean.
Focus: I no longer get into trucks drunk after a bonfire while a friend and another guy race down Boekel Road to Rathdrum. It only takes being cuffed and not charged, then weirdly dropped off by a cop to a local Super 1 to put the fear of that into you. Hell, that was yesterday. It pisses me off a dude who just turned 25 cannot wake the fuck up and stop acting like a teenager at times. I even helped his wife post his bail and went to bed at my house at 6:30 AM. Fuuuuck. Alternate Focus: I have a temper. This manifests as me trying to be as polite and forgiving as possible for my own sanity and to not appear as a berserk asshole. But sometimes, there is a cocksucker who just will not stop pissing you off, even if it is evident you have no qualm or beef with them, and they just want to lay into you. An example was when I worked for Kotzebue Crowley as a shop-hand. The company flew in this old alcoholic welder from another branch to weld for us, fixing us up a new forklift basket, boat hull attachments and make us, for some reason, a new stair-well to our tank farm. Besides being a condescending dick to everyone, he especially sought out me. I was 23, trying to tamp down my temper and keep my job and having people generally see me as a good worker, and had to help him by fetching pieces of steel for the new fence, and then painting it after he was finished. But this guy, basically for three hours, would try to engage me in conversation, and he'd criticize my life choices [Example but for one weird one: "You're twenty-three and you don't even have a kid yet? Hell, I had kids when I was seventeen!"] and compare them to his own, sitting on one of my unopened paint buckets. I tried everything to just keep the conversation rolling politely, but soon, I was pissed. By lunch break I was so fucking mad I was visibly shaking, and it didn't help I got paint all over my pants and this guy had four more fucking days with us. I got into that sort of scary-calm after lunch, and when for some reason he tried to come over and sit on his paint bucket post to begin his bullshit again, I said in no uncertain terms, "Go inside and get to work on the forklift basket." I had no authority as a shop-hand to tell him this, and he started to hem and haw and mock me, and I said, more forcefully and loudly, "Go inside you stupid son of a bitch, and leave me to my work." Dude got up and threw a rock at me, I stepped aside, now losing all non-confrontation left in me and half-roared, half-shouted, "GO DO SOME FUCKING WORK AND LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE!" He did, but he bitched so vociferously to my supervisor that he also cussed me out, but in the end, that guy would just glower at me and became really reserved, not even coming in the mornings to the break room for coffee. I heard later he tried to get in a fight with one of the crane operators and struck him, and then got the shit kicked out of him by the crane operator and the propane shack overseer. I was happy to hear this, and we were happy to report all of this to Crowley Maritime, but I never heard if that cunt was fired or not. But the point remains, I should have just kept my mouth shut, he'd have fucked up harder eventually. Alt-Alt Focus: My elder brother is a perfect example of someone who doesn't care anymore, but will complain when you even politely tell him that he's "retired at nineteen". He cannot hold a job, he's basically living as a stereotypical NEET at my parent's place and fucked up at a state school so hard he basically could not handle the "truth of failure" and went sort of apeshit. He began thinking he could make prophecies on how his life would go [he's an Evangelical Christian who believes in faith healing, so it kinda fits] and he also, somewhat hilariously, is technically a second-year electrical apprentice who can only just screw in a light bulb. He's now twenty-seven, obese, having his hair thin and I honestly get worried that if his fantasy world he has created collapses enough he will kill himself with the realization he's wasted his twenties doing nothing.
Learning from my own failures: Alcohol and me don't mix. Took me a while to learn this, glad I finally did. Had paramedics called on me once after I started turning blue. I was running quick down a short path to losing my marriage, fortunately was able to stop on my son's first birthday before he was old enough to realize what's going on. That was 9 months ago. Failures I wish I could stop: smoking, not sure if that's considered a failure in the context of this thread but it is for me until I find a way to succeed at quitting. People in my life who I wish could break the cycle of failure: several people who abuse alcohol in the family, wish they could or have the desire to stop it, so that I can be around them. While it doesn't bother me to be around people who are drinking, it does bother me when they cannot control themselves or at the very least stop being dicks.