Success comes after a fall

Success comes after a fall
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published Saturday, December 29, 2012
Section: Opinion

Failure is not my friend, but I’ve got used to its company over the years.  It has been shadowing me at a quiet distance since I was a kid, biding its time until I tripped up or blundered, then gleefully trumpeting my wrong turns and dead-end decisions. Failure has made a fool of me on plenty of occasions and brought me to my knees on others.

Most people like to measure themselves by their successes, but it’s their failings that are far more illuminating. I like to look back on mine as faint imprints on the stepping stones I’ve used to go places. They signal turning points in my life – those humiliating times when I made an ass of myself, or was blind-sided by hubris. Minor defeats were annoying reminders of why I needed to try harder, or get smarter. In truth, my career began with a succession of failures.

It took me years to get into journalism in the 80’s, long before there was a university degree of the same name to carry under my arm to job interviews. Back then knocking on doors was an acceptable entry route, but few bosses saw any potential in me. I was too naïve, too unsure of myself. I don’t really know what I ‘wasn’t,’ I was just wet behind the ears, I suppose. I never thought to trade favours on my father’s newspaper pedigree – that would have involved the shame of having to explain why I didn’t know my absent dad, so a career in print was not an option.

Instead, I got part-time jobs writing the funnies for breakfast radio and being the ditzy barrel girl (scatterbrained required no acting at 20) until finally, the news editor got fed up being harassed on the way to the loo and let me join the newsroom. I loved the business of writing hourly bulletins on the run,  dashing from the printer to the tiny sound-proofed booth to read the news, chasing tip-offs and ambulances, but it was telling stories with moving pictures that I really hankered after.

Trying to make the transition from radio to television meant getting rejected in newer and more painful ways. I spent a year working for peanuts, making cups of tea, doing the photocopying. News directors would sigh and give me another weary: “Nah, nothin’ going.” Or better still: “Come back when someone else has given you a crack.” Every knockback throbbed for a few days until I resolved to test my bruised ego again, each time that little bit more desperate to get noticed. When the ABC finally took a punt on me, I was 23, and tenacity had become my middle name.

TV is a fickle business – if you’re in front of the camera you live and die at the whim of executives who decide if you’re watchable. (Whatever that means.) Management faces change as often as rating seasons and those new to the job of hiring and firing like to make their mark by axing programmes, boning has-beens or elevating no-ones into some-ones. It’s a cruel business for wannabes and also-rans, but a favourite Chief of Staff once told me: “You haven’t made it in television until you’ve been sacked at least once.”

Once was all it took – age 31 – I was fired from my hosting job three weeks after having my first baby. No-one ever said why, but getting shafted on maternity leave meant hiring lawyers and going into battle, if only to preserve what shreds remained of my dignity. There was an out of court cash settlement, but psychologically, I was devastated (post-natal and devastated.) It was a terrible start to motherhood.

That sacking taught me how ruthless and disloyal people could be, and the identity crisis that followed floored me with self-doubts. I found out who my real friends were, and who was dining out on my misfortune. But I learnt why the greatest weakness is in giving up. I sat at home for six months adoring my new baby and acknowledged my shortcomings. Rock bottom isn’t a bad place to be when you realise there’s nowhere lower to go. The thing I feared most had happened to me, but I had survived my fall from grace and discovered strengths I didn’t know I had. So I dusted myself off and spent the next 12 years on other programmes, taking on tougher roles than I ever imagined myself capable.

I know my children need to taste failure sooner or later, the eldest one especially. But that’s a politically incorrect thing to say when many parents today prefer to clear the obstacles in their children’s path. I see it in my own parenting sometimes, that tendency to want to spare my children the pain of failure. And I remind myself to step back and let them fall.

Maybe it’s persistence I need to teach my children. I see them wanting to give up at the first sign of struggle, or trying to bow out as soon as they realize they’re not a natural at something new. I wonder if failure is often about arrogance too, because the smart set like to imagine that hard work and doggedness are for upstarts who aren’t gifted by birth. Show ponies expect to wake up one day and be an overnight success. (Actually, they’ve got it half right, because invariably, they will wake up.)

I checked with my bloke about his failures: “Haven’t had any.”

“Don’t be silly, what about failed relationships?”

“Haven’t had any.” (Perhaps self-delusion can be as rewarding as conceit.)

Stupidly, I pressed him further: “Well, what have my failures been?” That got him going: “Failure to get the message, failure to do what you’re told.”

Society now considers failure as some sort of deficiency. “Failure is not an option” is the new mantra for mavericks and up-and-comings. I subscribe to JK Rowling’s thoughts on defeat, as she reflected on a time when her marriage was over and her wizard Harry Potter had been rejected by a dozen publishers: “It’s impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.”

I don’t know many people who readily accept that the breakdown of their marriage was a failure of their own making – it’s usually the wicked spouse who’s blamed. That’s the escape clause we use so often to excuse our failures:  watering down the facts and re-telling our histories gets us off the hook – and offloads the burden of responsibility.

Agreeing to write this column was my biggest risk in several years: not least because it’d be my first foray into newspapers. The editor told me: “Your brief is to write of an ordinary life at home.” I set out to write a column from a woman’s perspective that a man would want to read. I worried that you would think less of me the more I wrote, that your dismissal would be like a rejection of my take on life: an awful prospect. But whether you desert me next week, or stick by me with your lovely emails and encouragement, I will keep trying to be fearless and honest. I may later regret some of the things I’ve written, but at least the regretter will be an older and wiser version of myself. I’m a veteran of failure, but I’ll take a risk on your tolerance.