Found here, where the image also has the text as an ALT image description. https://chaos.social/@saxnot/112349120606446433
The main thesis here is good, but that’s a mischaracterization of what people consider “failed” writers.
Someone who wrote one novel and had it published is not considered a failed writer, no matter if they then stop writing immediately. “Failed writer” is pretty much reserved for people who tried writing and couldn’t get anyone interested enough in it to publish it.
I’m not sure what labels would be applied to someone who exclusively pursued self-publishing, but that’s not really the common way.
Salinger is a classic example of this. One of the most celebrated authors of all time. He really only wrote one full novel and then essentially disappeared from public view. Despite this I don’t think anyone would consider him a failed writer by any definition
That’s who I was thinking of when I wrote this!
I think a better, but still not perfect, way to define it would be “This person wants to do X, but can’t support him/her/itself doing it.”
Of course, if you are already rich it doesn’t matter and then it is a bad metric (one of the reasons it isn’t perfect.) However, I think it is a better way to define it. Someone writing a few books as a hobby and then stops are not a failed writer, but someone that wants to be a writer but just can’t support it is.
Basically I think the intent matters, but that is impossible to measure (and people lie about it). So being able to do it as a profession is an ok metric.
It’s pretty cheap to “self publish” your own book. You basically pay printing fees instead of it being covered by the publisher.
If you close a business without going bankrupt, that is not failure.
Sounds like a crazy idea to me. Next you’ll be saying, end a TV show before the ratings have plummeted to zero.
Best to end it while you are still “Master of your Domain”.
> climb the ranks of the navy
> become “Admiral and Master of the Fourth Sea”
> end it with a splash, a crack, a gurgle, and a “Captain goes down with his ship!”…
> BBC pulls in a new actor for your role and carries on two seasons more before abruptly stopping and still doesn’t resolve your storyline.
I’d say it depends on the trajectory, closing a month or two before bankruptcy isn’t really a success.
I am a Trump level successful businessperson, I gathered 132.5 gorillion in investment dollars, pissed 130.75 away on becoming the biggest name in Dwarven Cuck Hentai, and sold it to a Google for .0008 gorillion, half of which was mine!
Pure profit, baybee!
If you part before death, that is a failed marriage tho
Curated tumblr, microblog memes, Lemmy being wholesome, 196, lots of places it could fit and be appreciated.
Literally until the moment I read your comment, I thought that community was “microbiology memes”
Not on topic, but wow.
And if all else fails: !nowhereelsetoshare@sh.itjust.works
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A fair point. However, reading the OP back, it seems to me that they aren’t dismissing “forever” as success. They are only stating that its not the only acceptable definition of it.
The way i see it, some things that require never-ending commitment to be deemed a success and others don’t, but that’s not how society sees it in general.
I think messages like the one in the post are a good thing to read and think about how they apply to your own life.
When you’re marrying someone you’re usually not like “lets try this and see where it goes” (that’s called dating), you’re more like “till death do us part” so yes, divorce is failure more often than not. Ending a relationship, not so much
I can understand your perspective, but I want to offer an alternative view, maybe less bound to societal preconceptions. I married my partner for many reasons, financial, wanting to raise a child together, wanting to share my life with them… But staying married for the rest of our lives is a crazy concept for us. The marriage has its purposes, but we both know that life can change and that we could decide that we had a good time, and that now the time has come to move on. A marriage is less romanticised for us, it has practical reasons. I guess being polyamorous helps with defining new relationship ideas on many levels ;)
So then why did you get married at all? Fun? Taxes?
Taxes alone is a valid reason. So long as there are social, financial and legal benifits to the institution then there is no argument to have. If you feel that love or religion is a requirment that I feel your concept of marraige is outdated.
No, you are a misunderstanding me. The post I’m replying to was acting as if they had some new wisdom from being polyamorous and their perspective on marriage. But it sounds like they’re just using it as a business move which is something a lot of non polyamorous people do as well, and nothing new. I wasn’t asking what reasons could possibly exist to get married outside of romance or whatever you’re talking about, I was asking SPECIFICALLY THEM why they bothered. But it seems the only actual reason they have is taxes, despite their diatribe.
Entirely fair question and thanks for expanding, bit personal for online nobodys like us. Sorry if I came off as accusitory.
So your partner is contractually obligated to stay with you of course!
In a lot of animal species, relationships are lifelong. For most of their history, humans had life long marriages in all corners of the world. Why are you calling it "a crazy concept "?
I think this is looking at it backwards. I think we shouldn’t view failure as a bad thing. Failure is learning. It’s part of growing. You fail at something, you’ve learned something (well, hopefully). Often you learn more by failing than by succeeding.
Like coaching my kid’s soccer team today: I want them to fail sometimes. I have a player doing well with his right foot and scores a couple of goals, I switch him to the other side and tell him to use his left foot “But I’m not good at it!” good. “I’m not good at goalie.” Excellent, here’s the goalie jersey and go get in there. That’s the point, I’m trying to make them better soccer players. If we just played into their strengths all the time, it would limit how much of a better player they can become.
At work, as a programmer, I try something out. It doesn’t work out because there was some unforeseen condition that causes my initial pattern to fail? No big deal, just redo the pattern from scratch (if, of course, there is the time for that) or rethink the pattern. And I’ve seen how often that solves some other problem, or makes another thing more efficient, or makes future development more easy.
So who cares if your coffee shop failed, or you’re a “failed writer” (I’ve never heard that before), if we don’t treat failure as a bad thing, then people will be more likely to accept that and learn from it.
I think you’re right about embracing failure, but I think this is different: is your kid’s soccer team a failure if they don’t play forever? Or is it a success that they play some games, maybe win once or twice, even just learn and have fun?
Some things in life we seem to label failures if they stop after a season, as if long-term stability were the only true goal.
Not the same philosophy, but also a very useful one. Would go hand in hand with OP
I can think of two fairly active potential homes for that content: Showerthoughts, which is for random trains of thought that you think others might relate to. Lemmy Be Wholesome is for content that you feel elevates people’s moods, is supportive, shares good vibes and so on.
Maybe the random community would be appropriate too
I can think of two fairly active potential homes for that content: Showerthoughts, which is for random trains of thought that you think others might relate to. Lemmy Be Wholesome is for content that you feel elevates people’s moods, is supportive, shares good vibes and so on.
Nice, thank you.
It fits very well for !eudaimonia@lemmy.dbzer0.com so I cross posted it there
I only see 3 posts in that community. Is it just me?
No, you are correct about the number of posts. But it looks like the community is only about 2 weeks old. And if they focus on quality over quantity that post count isn’t a bad thing.
Yeah, with that logic, life is no good because it ends.
and thank god it does!
No, I want to live for centuries at least!
I’m glad life ends but I’d rather have a few more centuries before it does! The two ideas are not mutually exclusive
centuries? do you realise how long those are?
I just created !justtext@lemmy.world in case you wanna just post the text instead of picture, because I’m perhaps irrationally annoyed by pictures of text.
The best way to get out of a business is generally to sell it though, so someone else keeps running it. Although shutting down a business for personal reasons isn’t generally considered a failure.
As for being an author, you only need one book to be a commercial success in order to be a “successful” author.
Success or failure depends on the goal. Perhaps outside observers can see something as a failure or success, but that doesn’t matter since you set the goals. As for which Lemmy community to post this to, I dunno.
When in doubt, !justpost@lemmy.world
Thanks.
Really depends on what your goals were to begin with. Most people don’t open a business or get married expecting for them to end. In that regard, they are failures.
I think I’m gonna disagree with the fandom dying thing.
From a system’s perspective - if it exist for a reason, for someone to use it, and then they stop using it and go away, leaving it alone without any use, I’d see that system being abandoned, lost, or dead.
Then again - someone can come back to it and turn it “alive” or active again!
