What If Failure Was the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me?

Redundancy Diaries #5 - I can't believe I'm saying it, but I am facing my biggest fears: embarrassment, and failure, and it's not going that badly

This is number 5 in my Redundancy Diaries series, where I document the wild ride of losing my job—and everything that came with it: structure, routine, and the illusion that I had it all figured out. What I didn’t expect was the little ways in which I’m becoming more myself than ever, gaining confidence, and finally trying different paths.

I’ve failed more in the past six months than I have done in the past six years. Rejection, embarrassment, moments I never saw coming. My confidence has been so low at times and I’ve not know how I’ll get back on track, how I’ll manage an interview, or if I’d be able to show up on here.

And strangely, I’m starting to think that might actually be the best thing that’s happened to me.

Because even though nothing is going to plan, or “well” in the traditional sense — mainly, I still don’t have a job — I’m realising that this is what I need in order to grow. She’s learning!! Finally!!

When I first found myself unemployed, I carried the same mindset I’d had for 30 years: don’t bother trying a new path, because you almost certainly won’t be good enough, and you’ll most likely fail anyway. Regardless of how hard you try.

But I wanted something different. I knew I wanted out of the 9-5. I never felt like I belonged in my previous companies.

I grew up successfully avoiding any potential failure as if that were my sole purpose in life. At university, I got a great degree. But I skipped lectures, avoided study groups, and rarely read even half of the actual course material. I knew I’d do well enough, but deep down, I avoided giving it my all—because if I’d tried hard and still didn’t get the top grade, that would have felt even worse. It was easier to keep things within my control.

I rarely told anyone I liked writing because I didn’t have a writing job. I wasn’t a journalist like my brother. It’s too competitive, I told myself—so I didn’t bother.

But to not try, I now realise, is to live an easy life. A pleasant life. A comfortable life, but not necessarily a life that you want.

I wonder if the sheer volume of (and variety, I might add) recent failures, have come to me in order for me to learn. I have to accept them. And it’s really annoying, because I really had every intention of just sitting there under my comfort duvet, not poking my head out, and waiting for the perfect opportunity to magically appear.

But if I want a life that feels like my own, I have to build it. That means showing up, starting conversations, finding people I admire, sharing my work, using my own voice—even when it feels scary, which it does most of the time.

When I first got laid off, I panicked about my lack of clarity on a future career. But I knew something had to change. Now, I see I’m in a period of building, laying the foundations, and I have to put experimentation at the forefront of all I do.

And experimentation inevitably means that things don’t amount to anything, a lot of the time.

So I’ve started doing just that: reaching out to people in industries I’m interested in, joining virtual coffees to network, sharing my creative work, publishing, posting on Instagram, starting to sell my products online.

It’s been hard. My heart genuinely hurts when I put something out there and it’s met with silence, which has been most of the time. I’ve sat there in tears, asking my husband for “just one win.”

It’s a slow journey, and I’m learning that failure is a constant companion, which maybe is precisely the point.

Maybe this path was given to me to show me that leaving my comfort zone is supposed to be terrifying. But the big failure I feared? It’s rarely as bad as I imagined. No one’s really judging me—and most of the embarrassment is just me, choosing to feel it.

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Here are some of my favourite failures from the past six months:

Failure 1: Selling my products online

I illustrate. By that, I mean I’ve drawn a handful of prints for my home, and I illustrated my wedding stationery suite. With this in mind, many kind people suggested I open an Etsy shop to sell my products. I didn’t want to do this initially, because to monetise a hobby is to open yourself up to an immense level of rejection. If it doesn’t go well, it’s kind of personal. It’s not like the client brief was wrong, it’s just that your work didn’t sell.

What if I get zero orders? What if no one actually likes my prints?

But I did it anyway: picked five prints, ordered them on luxury paper, set up the shop, did the photos, SEO, everything.

It’s been two months, and I’ve made one sale.

Even the production was ridden with fails. Two of the five prints arrived with a blue line through the middle of them. It was my fault, my hand must’ve slipped somehow when designing on Procreate. It was so faint I must’ve not seen it on my screen. I was annoyed at myself, but somehow in the moment I managed to pull myself together, order more, and set up the shop anyway.

After all, the aim wasn’t initially money. It was simply to see whether it was a worthwhile business to set up. To experiment. To give it a go.

The initial few months have shown me that it’s an incredibly oversaturated market, and hard to make money.

And for now, it’s sitting in the background. But I won’t give up, I won’t stop illustrating, but if I don’t make any money from it then that’s fine!

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Failure 2: No job offers

I have been applying to many jobs. I’ve also been “networking”. I’ve had some interviews, but nothing yet has materialised into an actual job. This is hard, because most of the time all people ask me is “how is the job search going, do you have any interviews?” And I have to be all like “I have nothing, lol”.

But maybe the real problem is how we define success during unemployment. I see that lack of offers as confirmation they weren’t right for me anyway. I want somewhere that looks at my whole online presence and says: I see how she thinks. I like her voice. Let’s work with her.

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Failure 3: Crickets when I reach out to people and brands I admire

I’ve sent my services to brands I admire, I’ve sent writing pitches to publications, and I’ve messaged a tonne of people. 90% of the time it’s no response or a polite rejection.

I would say however, that this has been my biggest success of the whole redundancy!

Because there’s no way in hell that I would’ve sent proactive messages to people a year ago. I would never have reached out. I’d never submitted anything to a publication before. I just thought I wasn’t good enough.

So despite nothing coming from these quite yet, I can see the small gains in confidence. That’s a win in my books.

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Failure 4: Instagram growth

I went all-in on my Instagram account a couple of months ago. It was a hub of home DIY, crafty projects, snippets from my writing, and illustrations.

My account still only has 160 followers. For the amount of time I put into it, that was kind of disheartening. I would see accounts doing similar things with tens of thousands of followers, and I couldn’t even get to 200.

I tried to narrow it down, do DIY only, or craft projects only, but that was impossible, given I’m only at the start of my creative journey and need this time to experiment and explore, and not niche down.

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I think that the universe had an urgent call:

This girl needs to feel failure. She needs to have her confidence knocked. She needs embarrassment. It’s the only way she’ll learn. It’s the only way she will then build the confidence. Please, let’s show her!

Not to punish me, but to show me that I’m capable of getting through it.

So yes, it still hurts me to my core to know that no one has bought (or even seen) my prints on Etsy. And I would still love to have an income by now. And I would love to be writing for money, sure.

But I have grown to a place of acceptance. Acceptance that this is my journey right now, and that on this journey I must, absolutely must, finally face my ultimate fear: embarrassment.

I need to keep showing up, experimenting, and remembering why I’m doing it. I illustrate because I love the joy that art brings me. I write because it brings me clarity and connection.

It’s a slow path, and I don’t know where it leads.

But I think I’ll keep going—because it’s been quite fun so far.

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