Life is All About the Try

Sometimes I like to look back at things I did when I was much, much younger and try to figure out what the hell my thought process could have possibly been. Why would anyone in his right mind do some of the ridiculous things that a child does? I guess the answer is because children aren't in their right minds, but this goes back to my early twenties as well. I don't want to pretend that I'm old enough now to realistically reminisce about “way back six years ago when I was twenty one,” but way back six years ago when I was twenty one I visited Disneyland and publicly asked the turtle from Finding Nemo (look the attraction up, it's a real thing) what his thoughts were on dinosaurs and the bible. Because maybe that seemed like a funny idea at the time. But you know what? All I remember is being embarrassed as soon as I finished asking it.

That scenario has little bearing on my life, then and now. It just serves to show that given the right set of circumstances, even someone as perfect as me can end up making an ass of himself.

One of those moments in my life that I look back at a lot was the first time I did a flip on solid ground. I should mention that it was also the last time I did a flip on solid ground. This happened when I was maybe seven or eight years old, and it was in my grandparents' living room. My grandma was there, and I told her I was gonna do a flip right in front of her and she'd be impressed by my amazing feat, or maybe I just blurted out some incomprehensible drivel that made sense in my head at the time. She said don't do it, I did it, my back hurt for a week, and the rest is history.

But when I look back at that moment, it's the whole “made sense in my head at the time” thing that I focus on.

How would that ever make sense in my head? I knew I wasn't athletic, except for T-ball, but at that point it had been years since I laid down my plastic bat and retired, and a career in Pinto was already a fading dream. What it must have been, then, was that I didn't know that I couldn't do it. There was no thought in my head that said gravity will pull me to the ground before I could land on my feet. Despite the immortal words of Yoda, in that moment there was no do or do not. There was only try. Maybe I would have landed that flip and amazed everyone in the room. Maybe not. How else would I know if not for trying? Life is all about the try.

It's a concept that I wished I applied more to my life these days. Professionally, this isn't an issue. I like to think I'm trying pretty damn hard. But creatively, I could afford to try a little more. I want to think of myself as a little kid again, in that I don't know that I can't do it. I should write more, I should send my work to an agent, I should enter more contests, but I've tried that before and it didn't always work out the way I wanted it to. It got into my head that I couldn't. But that is the worst excuse ever for not trying again. I want to get back into the mindset that I had when I was a little kid trying to flip in his grandparents' living room. I want to do these things and never think that I can't, even after a failure. Instead of thinking “I can't,” I want to think, “Well, I didn't that time.” That's what is beautiful about our childhoods, that the world can seem like a much more possible place.

I don't want this to turn into a sunshine and rainbows lecture, so I better stick a dick joke in here somewhere. Dicks.

Okay, we're back.

There are one thousand and one things from my childhood that I want to forget about completely. But the one thing I want to take from it is that obliviousness of “can't.” But damn it if it isn't easy to just write about it instead of doing something about it. Just like it's easier to talk about would'ves and should'ves. So I'm gonna tell myself now that I'm going to try more. Because maybe if I tried more, just a little more, I might land that flip more often. Life is all about the try.

Wow, Yoda was a real knob, wasn't he?