Failing Up
Finding comfort within when you screw up badly.
Let’s just take a moment to rest in the reality that we can’t nail it every single day. Hopefully, that thought will bring each of us some comfort. Now, we can move into what I am referring to as Aaron’s Blunderball.
Look, we all mess up, and I understand that. However, if you are like me, when I mess up it is complete chaos in my mind. I have had plenty of life pressures and issues to face over the last few months. My largest release of that tension is in creation, with comic books, podcasts, and editing being chief outlets among them. So, when I mess up in one of those fields, it throws me into a bit of chaotic turmoil.
I messed up, pretty darn badly. I run a comic book company and let a book get through printing, and was prepping it to be put into boxes, before realizing that one page had an old edition that was missing its lettering. How ridiculous is that? It is such a simple mistake, but one that inevitably costs the company money, and costs our printer time. As I realized the gravity of the mistake, sitting there with my business partner in silence, I found that there were just no words to say. It happened, we knew we needed to fix it, and we knew it sucked.
Still, I laid out for a good two hours after it happened to try to get my mind right. It is difficult, to face a glaring error that you know you were responsible for. What I have learned, and am still learning, is that it is important to continue to lay safeguards down in preventable issues. This error could have been caught if I did not rely on myself for so much of the final editing and assembly. Even though the digital copy of the book came out fine, I should have fine-tooth combed the physical files before okay-ing them to print. I should also not only rely on my eyes, as I am the one that wrote the issue. I have realized that when I write, my brain fills in gaps and auto-corrects errors to match my intention. That is pretty awful when situations like this one arise.
I want to encourage each of my creative friends to not be afraid of delegation and having other people look over your work. In the end, it can save you from falling into preventable issues. I know it can be hard to put any trust in others, but it is worth it if you can. Today, I feel a bit better about it. I know it will cost some to get the printing fixed, but I discovered a market for misprinted books, and have had others reach out to help out as well. Find your support system, and try not to screw it up as bad as I did!