On Failing

This week was one of the best weeks I’ve had this year. I did well on my yearly performance review at work, ran a PR 5K time, and finally got a print that I really wanted for a long time. Despite this, I find myself consumed by frustration due to a single mistake I made.

…

I fucked up.

I missed a crucial detail in a major project spanning multiple teams potentially putting the entire 4 month scoping effort at risk. Everyone in the project overlooked it in all fairness, but if anyone were to catch it, it should have been me - both as the person who initially pitched the project design, and as the code monkey who spends everyday in the messy code base digging through all the technical details.

As the person who knows this project better than anyone else, I completely blame myself for this huge miss. I know I’m being harsh on myself, but in hindsight, this was just obvious, unmissable even.

Stripe tries to put in systemic processes to prevent future reoccurences of similarly shaped problems rather than assign blame. Yeah, except in this case, we can’t do that because the problem was me and my smooth brain missing something so basic and obvious. I wish there was a process we could put in place to prevent people (aka me) from making stupid decisions, but unfortunately that doesn’t exist. If it does exist, please let me know.

Now everyone has to work around the clock and scramble to address the problem and I feel like shit. No one has blamed me or pointed a finger. Everyone around me has been super supportive, which ironically has made me feel worse since it makes me feel like I’ve let down those around me. This source of frustration and sense of shame I feel is completely internally self imposed. I really am my own worst critic.

Idk

In the past even when you hit setbacks, I feel like there’s always a factor of understandability for why.

• Dropping a 30% on a midterm in operating systems? Yeah I didn’t study to fully understand the topics and deserved the grade I got.
• Not making the select soccer team in high school? The kids trying out were objectively a bit better, and I didn’t put in the hours training to improve.
• Getting dumped by my girlfriend in college? My ex-bestfriend was probably more compatible with her anyways.

In my experience, these problem’s are easy to move past and not dwell on. Life happens. Sometimes factors are beyond my control so it is no use to be upset when you get hit by uncertainties - the future will be full of more of those anyways¹. Other times I made conscious decisions in the past that led to the result deservedly and I can agree with the ultimate outcome (although not ideal of course). Next time I can work towards putting more effort and hard work in. These types of things I can accept and move on without feeling bad.

I think what makes this most recent pill hard to swallow is that factors were completely in my control, except there wasn’t anything that can explain the mistake except just plain carelessness and forgetfulness. It’s not like I wanted to miss it - it was just a momentary blind spot gone unnoticed. Most importantly, I think the biggest thing is that I know my mistake impacts other people.

If the only consequence for my fuck up at work was I had my yearly bonus stripped away (please don’t do this Yi), I would feel less bad. I missed the detail, I don’t mind taking responsibility alone. But the reality is that others have to work to cover my mistake and I have a really hard time shaking that guilty feeling because of it.

Failing More

I feel like reacting this negatively to what should be a common thing in life has made realize I grew up pretty spoiled.

I don’t mean spoiled in the “come from a wealthy background” sense at all - I certainly did not come from money. I mean it more from a “going through relatively unproblematic life” sense of lucky.

Through a combination of both luck and hard work, I find that most things in life just tend to happen pretty naturally. Things just have a tendency to work out. I never really struggled in school academically and found things easy to learn. I’ve always had a decent social and active life (I touch grass once a week :proud:). I have a great loving family who supports me unconditionally.

I just feel like I can’t really complain about a lot of things in life. Maybe I’m just a positive person (or just ignorant / delusional). I don’t know.

I think there is some element of not being used to getting through difficult misfortunes in life. I think could explain why I’m struggling to cope with what seems to be a normal thing to happen in life. Maybe I just need to fail more and get used to that. Sounds a bit odd saying that I guess.

Sigh

The truth is, I just made a mistake. Everyone slips up at one point or another. I know this logically. I really do. I know that if I was the one impacted by someone elses mistake, I would be more than understanding - offering to help even. I’m also aware that this failure, while significant to me in the current moment, will fade in a few days. In the words of my English high school teacher, “Time turns tragedy to comedy”. (I bet he plagarized that somewhere tbh).

But it’s do as I say, not as I do.

My favorite rubber ducky debugging partner

Instead of celebrating all the great things that also have happened this week², - a promotion at work, running a sub 20 minute 5k, and receiving this silly guy - I’m left just kind of dejected.

I know that humans tend to focus on the negatives too much, but man, I wish I could turn this feeling off. I know that this week was a good one deep down, but failing has seemingly overshadowed that fact.

I’m doing well, and honestly, I’m probably just making it sound worse than it actually is (not a drama queen btw) but I did take this learning opportunity much harder than I expected. I am definitely too harsh on myself, but at the same time, I am the person I am today by having high standards for myself.

I guess there is a balance between forgiving yourself by recognizing the inevitability of mistakes, with maintaining a high bar of accountability in the strive toward improvement. I guess I’m still working on finding that balance. Or maybe it’s just as simple as failing more. Not sure.

1. Just take a look at my other blog post where I got car issue after car issue. Case in point. ↩

2. To be fair, I think some of these goals (job promotion and running my goal 5k time) are more satifying due to the journey rather than just the end result. The wins occurred in the process of getting to my current position rather than the final state itself. ↩