When I was a kid, I never thought about failure.
I thought about drawing.
Cereal boxes became canvases. I’d take the smallest image and recreate it bigger — just to see if I could. I could memorize a Disney character in one glance and redraw it from memory at 11 years old.
There was no fear in that.
There was no label.
There was just curiosity.
Then high school happened.
Structure felt like a cage. I wanted to create. Instead, I was stuck in English class, math class, rules, deadlines. At the end of it, I didn’t even graduate with my class.
Seven failed classes.
I had to do night school — 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. — just to get the diploma.
And somewhere in that process, a shift happened.
I stopped listening to myself.
I started listening to other voices.
“School might not be for you.”
“You’re not academic.”
“You’re not built like that.”
Little by little, I accepted it.
And the label “dummy” stopped being something someone said — it became an identity.
That’s the dangerous part.
Because once a label becomes identity, you don’t argue with it.
You live it.
After that, I bounced between jobs. Shame built up. I avoided thinking about my future. I questioned whether I would ever feel good about myself.
Years passed like that.
Eventually I started fixing things:
Debt.
Weight.
Procrastination.
Feeling academically illiterate.
Being broke.
I learned how to break big problems into smaller chunks.
And it worked.
But even when it worked, I’d look at how long it took — and that would depress me. I’d think, this should’ve happened sooner.
So I lived in a cycle:
Progress → Compare → Feel behind → Spiral.
Insomnia. Rumination. Looping thoughts.
Then something shifted again.
I realized I wasn’t broken.
I was programmed.
At the core, I had allowed other voices to override my own. I stopped trusting myself and started outsourcing my identity to opinions.
That became the real problem.
So I started doing something small.
I started writing.
Not because I wanted to be a writer — but because writing lets me see my day. Literally see it.
When I see it, I get perspective.
When I get perspective, I see patterns.
When I see patterns, I see programming.
When I see programming, I can choose differently.
Writing helped me move from feeling everything to observing it.
That changed everything.
I’m relearning how to listen to myself again.
I’m building structures that work for me — not structures that were handed to me.
And here’s the truth:
Compounding effort doesn’t guarantee success.
But it builds skill.
It builds understanding.
It builds self-trust.
And that’s something no one can label away.
I wasn’t incapable.
I was disconnected.
Now I’m reconnecting.
Reader question:
When did you first start believing a label about yourself — and who gave it to you?
Subscribe — I post Tue/Thu/Sun + daily prompts, and Street Cinema every Saturday around 5 PM.
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