What is success?  What is failure?  I tend to think in black and white.  Sometimes I see in black and white in times of stress – life in Kodak moments.  But that is not how life is.  There are many shades of grey in between.  There are other spaces between success and failure.

You would think, looking at the picture above, that I’m a successful gardener.  And you would be right.  I am successful for that much, but as for the rest of the garden….We hope to do better next year.  It is in the other spaces in between success and failure that give rise to our better selves, where we are motivated to do not perfect, but BETTER.  There are no spaces in perfect, no room to grow.

My teachers in high school had such high hopes for me.  They pushed me to go to university, when all I want at the time was to be a secretary.  So I went to university.  I succeeded in finishing two years, but not in getting a degree.  I dreamed of being an artist and a writer.  I did not become such, though I dappled in both.  But I did end up being a secretary for awhile, until my heart became discontented.

I became a nurse then, not because I want to serve mankind or such noble causes.  I was bored and felt unfulfilled.  I wanted to be an executive secretary, but I did not have that kind of persona.  I could not move up.  I was a failure!  And so I moved on.  I became a nurse….now for more than 30 years.

I’m still trying to write.  Now it is purely for my own pleasure, for my own growth.  I started this blog with an intention of a thousand words every day.  But I am falling quite short of a thousand words!  But I am writing.  I am still working towards my goals.  Maybe I will have to change my goal to a thousand posts a year.