Failure When Deserving Success; Harvest Pictures

I don't know about where you are, but it's getting mighty frosty up here!

Thankfully, the last three days have been gloriously sunny--clear skies, cold nights. Our garden beds are starting to look forlorn: we're glad that we (especially Phil) spent a lot of time last week pulling things out of the ground (more harvest pics in a minute).

First, I want to talk about the painful poignancy of experiencing failure when you absolutely know that you have done everything possible to ensure--to deserve--success. (Of course, slapping on the label of 'failure' is adding to the pain, but I'll get to that in a moment.)

It's normal to expect to build muscle if you exercise consistently. It's normal to expect to achieve some success and recognition if you work countless hours on a project designed to benefit other people. It's normal to expect that if you spend lots of energy digging and hauling, bringing natural fertilizers to your garden, you will grow better and more nutritious vegetables. But sometimes, the fertilizer you bring in has weed seeds in it, or contains more nitrogen than the plants need to thrive. Or, you spend countless hours and pour your talent into your writing, but cannot get your book (or even a few poems) published (yes, failure where success is deserved is a big part of being a writer).

Or, you exercise consistently, vigorously, for many months; you never ever eat junk, or overeat, or do any other counterproductive thing, and after all that time you see virtually no change in your body composition. That's me. Phil was an athletic coach for many years, and while he's constantly careful to insist that he loves how my body is, he too is expressing surprise that no change has happened with all the work I've been doing: he knows how badly I want it.

In the bigger scheme of things, being of service to other people and getting my writing out there are both far more important than my body composition goals. But the body stuff is so near and direct that I tend to think, "If I can't succeed in this, how could I possibly succeed in anything else?" So this very personal sense of failure can infect everything else.

I've been patient! I've set reasonable goals! I've done the work! I've formulated and repeated affirmations, I've visualized the goal achieved! And all for nothing, or nothing but some improvements in general strength and stamina.

But this isn't a rant or a pity party. I meant what I said in my post about purpose and audience, that really, the only way to make this kind of issue meaningful is to look for what I can say or do toward the positive about it; what I can learn that I can share with others.

So, we know my endocrine system is messed up. In fact, it bears remembering that until about eight months ago, I couldn't exercise at all--so, from a different perspective, there is some success here. When I see my ND this week, I'm going to ask very specific questions about the whole body composition situation related to endocrine problems, and how I can remedy it; and will share here.  I will open myself to the possibility that cutting out fat has contributed to my problems and will find out 'how much of it' I should add in (acknowledging that my recent efforts to include it have been somewhat minimal), and will share ideas on here for how to incorporate that in preparing food.

The feedback from Phil, who is an experienced coach, is a preventative against slipping into self-flagellation. With his observations, I can't justify calling myself fat and lazy, although that's definitely a reflex response to this kind of frustration.

I will acknowledge that patience, persistence, affirmations and visualizations have worked and do work for many people: that maybe I simply need to be more patient, more persistent. That rejecting the affirmations and visualizations may have contributed to my sense of despair: starting them up again may engender more peace around the issue. And I may also need to look at underlying negative voices that undercut the affirmations. I will be unbearably honest with myself and share on here whatever I think might be helpful.

One more thing: I haven't submitted a piece of my writing anywhere for many months. Submitting work for publication, receiving multiple rejections, sending them out again, is an important part of being a writer that I have been neglecting, partly for the simple reason that I'm afraid of the sense of failure. But I can use this experience with my own body to remind myself that in fact, I am very used to dealing with failure. And maybe, as William Stafford would say, I can continue to strive to fail better.

Thank you for letting me share this: I feel that transforming feelings of despair into something more positive and constructive for the purposes of the blog is helping me to feel and be better about it away from the computer screen as well.

Now for some harvest pictures.
I keep finding more and more monstrous rutabagas. I think this one may be bigger than my head!

 Here's another shot of it--big and multifaceted.

And oh, we have spuds! I'm so grateful to Phil for getting them dug before everything freezes, although I'll miss my routine of the last month or so, of going out to the garden when preparing a meal and simply pulling as many as I wanted out of the ground.

 We washed them in our water catchment, let them dry in the sun, and sorted through them, setting aside any that were cracked by too much nitrogen (from kelp), or bored by worms, or gnawed by rodents. Those should be eaten first--they won't keep as well.

We have some huge ones and some delicate little ones. Guessing maybe 150lbs of potatoes all told.

Do you have experience of working for many months toward a goal and not achieving it nor making progress toward it? What has helped you to live with that?