Posts
10 -- Serial Blooper
NOTE: This blog is a continuing dialog between the two faces of rilla. The identity crisis is explained (if such a thing is possible) in the first edition. Click here to read: 1 -- Introduction
rilla: To err is human.
Rilla: Have I heard that before somewhere? Sounds familiar.
rilla: Oh. It’s nothing. Just a play I’m reading.
Rilla: Hmm. I have heard that.
rilla: What?
Rilla: That erring bit, that’s just a fancy way of saying making mistakes, yeah? Well, I have heard that making mistakes is part of the human condition.
rilla: Uh-huh. Well, my friend’s really upset right now. Life’s pretty bad and she’s down. Thinks her life is a sequence of mistakes. She wants to know if you can be a serial mistake-maker.
Rilla: Not necessarily.
rilla: Oh? I thought you just said that erring is part of being human?
Rilla: There is a way to get rid of making mistakes.
rilla: What’s that?
Rilla: Get rid of choice. Choice is the culprit. If you have no choice, you make no mistakes. Simple!
rilla: Hmm. Interesting hypothesis. I kind of like that. Takes the uncertainty out of things. That’s nice.
Rilla: Yes! If you didn’t have any choice, you would never have given up your first job and lost that comforting salary. That was a MISTAKE!
rilla: But then, I’d never have gone to art school.
Rilla: Yeah, but if you didn’t have any other options, you would have stuck to art school and not gone off to learn how to make video games…that was a DISASTER.
rilla: But then, I’d never have gone to Australia.
Rilla: Yeah, but if you couldn’t choose what you did with your life, you’d never have given up your web-design job in Sydney…another loss of comfortable earnings, another HUGE MISTAKE.
rilla: But then, I’d never have started writing…YIKES! That would have been awful. That’s unthinkable. That would have been the biggest disaster of all!
Rilla: I wouldn’t have minded in the least.
rilla: NO!
Rilla: Well then, stop complaining about making mistakes. If you don’t want to make the choices in your life, someone else will make them for you.
rilla: But that someone else can make mistakes too?
Rilla: Only if they’re human.
rilla: Which would be the case.
Rilla: Then you'd just be stuck with the mistakes someone else makes for you.
rilla: Scary! No way to get out of those mistakes, huh? No second chance, or third or fourth?
Rilla: Nope. You’d live with the serial mistakes of somebody else. At least that way, you can blame someone else for your lousy life. No regrets of your own.
rilla: But you’d be stuck in someone else’s doo-doo.
Rilla: I believe the word is poop.
rilla: Doesn’t sound very attractive whichever word you choose. Umm…do you make mistakes, errors of judgment, blunders, slip-ups, bloopers…a mistake by any other name…?
Rilla: Me! Ahem! How ridiculous! I’m perfect.
rilla: I guess I’m perfect too.
Rilla: Yeah? How so?
rilla: I’m perfectly human.
You are the fabulously quirky and independent woman of character. You go your own way, follow your own drummer, take your own lead. You stand head and shoulders next to your partner, but you are perfectly willing and able to stand alone. Others might be more classically beautiful or conventionally woman-like, but you possess a more fundamental common sense and off-kilter charm, making interesting men fall at your feet. You can pick them up or leave them there as you see fit. You share the screen with the likes of Spencer Tracy and Cary Grant, thinking men who like strong women. 
8 comments:
That's one of the great things about life, isn't it? That you head down a road and you think that road is heading somewhere specific and then you a fork, and another fork and pretty soo you're so far off where you had intended to go. Then you look at it and there's no way you could have imagined such good things for yourself (learning experiences and all)-
Ah, the Unbearable Lightness of Being. Life is not writing. We don't get a chance at several drafts. What you do is done, and consequences have to be dealt with. That said, I do agree with Stephanie - Hi, Steph, remember me, we met that last summer at the SCBWI conf in LA, and I have several of your drawings hanging in my office - that it can be for the best. I find that if I keep on repeating a mistake, I obviously didn't understand something along the way. Once I do, I stop making the mistake. Of course, it sounds much simpler than it actually is. And yet...
Yup, those forks in the road. When life is wonderful, they tend to appear so rosy. And when life is bad, well, haven't we all asked that question...am I a serial mistake-maker? Those of us who are human, that is. Hopefully, we all come out of the really bad ones happier and a little wiser. What a wild and woolly journey it is...
Serial-mistake makers, I know a lot of them. They seem to crawl out of the wood work. Watch out for them in traffic. That's when those serial-mistake makers are the scariest! Yep, yep, yep. Not cool to run into them on the road.
Hey, Rilla, at least you went to Art School and other good schools instead of the School of Hard Knocks. You'd think that serial-mistake makers would learn a lot at the Hard Knock School, but they seem to have to repeat many courses. What a surprise.
And those mistakes always cause a ripple effect, and it goes on and on and on, and ripples on to the next person, and the next person, and the next person. No wonder the world is so mixed up. It's the culmination of milleniums of ripple effects from serial-mistake makers and even people who make just one tiny mistake in their whole life. So go figure. Don't let it boggle your mind. Just go with the flow, ride the ripples, put a smile on your face, chin up, and keep on keepin' on. Personally I'd rather be a cereal-mistake maker. Easily solved by buying a different brand!
Oh LynNerd,
You are too funny. The world would be quite a place if all of us made nothing but cereal mistakes -- of which I have made many. If only they were the only kind I'd made. Been knocking around the School of Hard Knocks too, trying desperately not to have to repeat a grade! Unfortunately, right now I am in such a state of carb intolerance that cereal of any kind is a huge mistake as well. ;)
Oh my, my, that's a double whammy, Rilla, serial mistakes and cereal mistakes. You can do without carbs and mistakes, but it's true that sometimes what you think are mistakes aren't mistakes at all. They're just part of the journey, helping you get there (you know, where you're supposed to be), even though it may be tough going. I think we should break into the School of Hard Knocks and put some stuffing and a sock on that hammer that they dish out the knocks with just to soften the blows. And while we're at it, I think we need to shoot that monkey that keeps throwing all those wrenches into everything! Yep, that would help.
Keep on blogging cuz you're so funny and also get some great points across.
It sounds like your "mistakes" have led to some amazing adventures, so don't stop, Rilla! Can't wait to hear what your next boo-boo brings. :-)
Oh Natalie,
If only they weren't so painful!
Post a Comment