Oh, sure… I’m sure you expected that old saw, “Anything worth doing is worth doing well.”

Duh.

Of course it is.

One of my mottos is:

Win, or fail spectacularly.

I’ve found, though, that few people really consider what it means to fail spectacularly.

So, I’m here to tell you. Because I’m not an expert in lots, but I’m an expert in failing spectacularly.

• I dropped out of HS in my sophomore year.
• I married a man who would emotionally abuse me AND become a manipulative addict, stealing much of what I’d saved right out of our shared accounts, even selling my stuff for more money.
• I started a new business with two partners, committed everything and LOST IT ALL, everything, ended up living out of my car.
• I am currently failing at meeting every deadline I set for myself in the development of my new project.

And I’m happy.

Because what I’m working on now is worth totally fucking up on, over and over, because when it’s right, it will be freaking fantastic. Amazing. Magical.

But before then, I’m going to lose money (mine and others’), stress out, get more grey hairs, scream out of sheer frustration, feel hopeless and useless, shame myself for not knowing everything I think I should know, make boneheaded fucking moves, gain weight because I’m not taking care of myself, hurt my neck staring at a computer for too long…

But let’s not even talk about me.

Let’s talk about kink.

Last night, in Fayetteville, I gave a BDSM Basics talk. And I talked about The Four Kinds Of Kinksters, and I mentioned the third kind of kinkster:

People who admit they don’t know all the kinky things, and let that paralyze them…

And I met a guy like this a few weeks ago.

Gorgeous.

Sexy AF.

VERY interested in kink.

Wanted to learn to be dominant.

SOOOOO enthusiastic. Always up in my messages.

Until he stumbled once. Then, it was all:

“Oh, maybe I’m not cut out for this. I don’t know. Maybe I’m not meant to be a dominant. I don’t know this stuff.”

And so now, he’s paralyzed. Not because he doesn’t want it. He does.

Because he doesn’t want to totally fuck up.

And I told him the secret, that EVERY SINGLE DOMINANT EVER Has totally fucked up. More than once. Probably more than a thousand times.

(In fact, I could make that about every single human, but this is about kink.)

The difference is that we know that being willing to fuck it all up is part of our commitment. Part of knowing it’s worth doing is knowing we’re going to look like idiots, and feel like fools, and do twatwaffle things along the way to getting better and earning trust and getting blowjobs on command.

The thing is, of course it’s worth doing well. We’d do a hell of a lot more things if we knew we’d do them well.

But what things are worth it to you to fail over and over and over again? To totally fuck up?