I seem to be self-motivated by imposing challenges on myself, ones to better my artistic ability, to make positive changes or to just do something I feel is worthwhile. Sometimes we get so bogged down with life that we don’t make time for the really important stuff. A friend of mine has been struggling with not making time to be artistic, afraid that if she creates something, it will be “sucktastic”. 
Okay, I love the word, but I hate what it means here. Half of the crazy art I make is sucktastic, but it comes from my heart so it still has meaning for me. I might not ever post my sucktastic art, but the artistic expression used during the making of it is a much needed emotional release.
Sometimes we have to be sucktastic before achieving fantastic. I was listening to a talk radio show about success and failure in our school system. They spoke about a pendulum, with success and failure on each swing. The pendulum theory, as I like to call it, basically means that you’re allowed to succeed as much as you’re allowed to fail. I have had many failures in all areas of my life, and sometimes it’s hard to get back up, brush yourself off and try again. Allowing for big time failure can bring big time success, the sky being the limit. If you allow for a little failure, you can achieve a little success. This often feels like being in a box or being grounded, and sometimes we don’t even realize we’re in this position. And the worst case scenario in this theory? Non-movement or no room for failure. This creates a vast black hole of nothingness. Sometimes this is us being paralyzed with fear, sometimes it’s lack of motivation, but the important thing is identifying your issue and finding a way to move past it.
What does all of this have to do with Trash Society? A lot. Sometimes I loose sight of why I’m doing any of this. Is it really making a difference? I’m not in this for the money, obviously, as if I were to place a financial statement on it, it would be in the red. I could use my blogging time to do freelance work. I have a passion for what I’m doing, but I do sometimes lose sight of it. Trash society is to make a difference, hopefully in less waste. If you apply the pendulum theory to you and your talent, and if you’re not allowing yourself failure, then your talents are being wasted. Where are you on the pendulum swing?
Thank you for writing this blog, Jodi! It ‘made a difference’ today! Very thought provoking!
Thanks for reading it. :)
Playing with words is often a useful intellectual exercise, because words and the rules which we relate/connect words are our tools to make sense of this world. Words and grammar/logic enable us to make decisions in complicated situations where pattern recognition alone would not help to find out what is really going on.
In your post I read the words: pendulum swing, failure (sucktastic), success.
My reality is probably very different from yours because my experiences are different and my brain is organized in a different way. My associations with the picture of a pendulum swing is therefore something else:
The oscillation of a self correcting system (for instance an op-amp with negative feedback including latency achieved with coil or RC). The ups and downs of natural cycles with feedback. The ups and downs in free markets.
This last association could be related to the main theme of your blog, because a wildly fluctuating free market economy will produce lot of waste. As I let my associations proceed one step further I come to this notion: A wildly fluctuating free market economy could be destabilized and destroyed by using a downward swing to just push a little but further down so that the self regulating forces of the market (demand — supply) will not be able anymore to generate an upward swing.
How could that be done?
Stop buying. Drop out. Stop consuming. Leave the party. Don’t give them a chance to brainwash you — don’t waste time with corporate media. Take part in small networks to make the big systems irrelevant. Avoid bank services and any other financial services as far as it is possible. Cut your credit card into pieces!
What do I associate with failure and success?
Failure is inevitable when we try out things and learn to manage the world around us in a Darwinian way (trial — error). But every creature that is programmed to survive will try to keep the failures and the resulting damage as small as possible. Every creature will avoid risks that could cause irreparable damage.
Risk taking is a defining aspect of the “entrepreneurial spirit” of our society. Higher risk means higher reward. (There are individuals (adolescents, gamblers) who seek the thrill of high risk even without prospect of high reward because of insufficient dopamine regulation, but I don’t mean this here.)
The risk takers in our society, the entrepreneurs, the investors, the stock market traders, the bankers, take the risks on behalf of the employees or the broader population. They minimize their personal risks (golden parachutes). No banker ever ended homeless on the streets of NY. And the “crash-related jumping epidemic” between 1921 and 1929 is just a myth. There were a few suicides of bankers or investors in the Great Depression but none in 2008. People have learned to play the system, they know that they will be bailed out even if they have messed up everything.
That was my take on the terms: pendulum swing, failure (sucktastic), success.
Nice blog, btw. I subscribed and I’m looking forward to further posts.
Thanks so much for your perspective! That’s a lot to process, and some really great things to think about. The one thing that jumped out at me, as I was having this conversation over lunch yesterday, is this, “People have learned to play the system, they know that they will be bailed out even if they have messed up everything.” This is so true. I’m trying to teach my kids that there are consequences to all of their actions, whether they be good or bad. In the schools, they are not allowed to fail anymore. If a kid receives a grade below a 70, they can re-do that assignment or test until they get above a 70, making it a passing grade. There’s no motivation for them to do well the first time. This doesn’t prepare them for life, nor does it teach them good values and work ethics. We have everything from filing bankruptcy to large corporations being bailed out by the government. You’re right. People play the system. And why not? We get 2nd chances.
Thanks again for your insight. Finding a good balance in an unbalanced world is not easy. ;)
I am so glad to read that people actually understand that not everybody wins all the time!!!
I get tired of our kids being “leveled” out and each given a trophy or a sticker or a grade they don’t deserve no matter how much they participated or how well they participated because we are worried about their “self esteem”. What kind of damaged generation is it that feels mediocrity needs to be rewarded???
A “disservice” in the nicest thing we could say this is doing to our children, we are robbing them of the drive to learn and push and compete, in a moral, ethical, spiritual and intellectual way…notice I didn’t mention “physical”….we’ll come back to that…
Okay – turns out I do have a soap box! (I am not getting off though ;)
Good! None of us should get off this soapbox. The funny thing? Most of the teachers I’ve talked to hate this as much as the rest of us. And don’t even get me started on the TAKS testing…