Hello My Name Is Failure

By Deggy Smines

Ever felt like a failure? I have for the last 40 years. Come and explore my 40 years of failures with me. You may find humor, heartbreak, ingenious ideas, or just pure entertainment in this book. If nothing else, it may make you feel better about your own life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Aug 25, 2018
• ISBN: 9780359048298

Book preview

Hello My Name Is Failure

Hello My Name Is Failure

Copyright © 2018 by Deggy Smines

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

First Printing: 2018

ISBN: 978-0-359-04829-8

Rapid Deer Ranch Publishing Michigan

Introduction:

A fictional novel; a memoir; an autobiography.  This or some of this manuscript could be tall-tales told to intrigue or embellish somewhat factual stories, or true-life events that must have been true, because they aren’t quite fancy enough to be fiction.

Isn’t life grand, we can categorize its intent and understanding by merely classifying it by literary terms?  We can hide in its truths by calling it fiction or stand tall and proud and yell from the mountain tops, THIS IS MY MEMOIR.  Let’s just stick with calling this a manuscript, that way I don’t have to admit that any of this is true.  Is there such a thing as a fictional memoir; probably not, so let’s just get started and see where this thing leads us.

Chapter One:  Introduction to a Failure

Winters are long in Michigan.  Sometimes the cold and inability to get out-and-about makes one’s mind begin to wander.  I began learning early on that mine roamed a bit more than others.  Almost to the extent that it never actually stopped wandering.  Having an active brain, keeps you young; you know you’re alive when your brain is active my grandmother used to say.  Really, when else do you have time to sit back and think in Michigan?  Summers are full of squeezing in everything you couldn’t do for the last six months over the winter.  You’ve got boating to do, fishing, and hiking, outdoor concert going, swimming, camping, beach going, and summer parties to attend, and then you have to put in a vegetable garden if you want the taste of real vegetables, and then can them in late summer so you can enjoy a little taste all winter long, and then in your free time you have to make sure you’re keeping the lawn mowed and gardens weeded, etc. etc.  That’s one thing that we Michigander home owners take such pride in, our lawns, even though we only enjoy our lawn and gardens six months out of the year just like our other summer hobbies. There’s something about seeing the green grass, the smell of a fresh mow, the pride you feel knowing you have defeated the pesky weeds and somehow snuck by without the moles destroying every inch of it.  You have your regimen down; you apply the spring weed and feed Memorial weekend and then apply the Fall weed and feed after Labor Day. Just like clockwork you have trained yourself to be a true lawn care expert, but it’s only temporary, this must be repeated year after year or a single weed can take over like a room full of laughter at an Ellen show.

Where was I?  Oh, yes, winter is the time when you can truly contemplate on making real plans and your future goals and inspirations.  I have spent about every winter for the last twenty plus years thinking and contemplating on grand ideas and ostentatious ventures that would lead me to success and riches.  Well, at least just supplement my income with something I’d like to spend my time doing; I do work full time and all.

I’ve worked for the man for the last 17 years and though I am very grateful I have a good paying job with good benefits, holidays and weekends off to enjoy my summer hobbies and winter contemplating, I still have always had that infection; that feeling of anxiety that maybe, just maybe there is something out there that I could do that would be self-fulfilling, make a good income and let me work at something I created, that I enjoy doing. I know some of you know exactly what I mean.  You get that feeling that, I must be doing something; reading something, acting out something, writing something, but you haven’t quite figured out what.  I’ve always thought I could come up with an idea to get rich and live happily ever after in the world of self-employment.  I soon learned after about the first 15 years or 15 winters of grand idea making that the rich part would probably never come, but a steady income doing something I enjoyed would certainly be nice; wouldn’t it?

Now I must give you a little background on myself for you to know that I’m not a brilliant business person like Sara Blakely or a Bill Gates entrepreneur. I know, you made that conclusion yourself after reading the title of this book but stick with me here.  I come from a barely middle-class upbringing in a barely middle-class neighborhood, in a family of four.  I attended public schools and put myself through community college and later in life went back and got a bachelor’s degree in community service; seemed like a good idea at the time.  It probably had something to do with a grand idea I had at the time when I had to begin selecting a course of study. I don’t really recall other than I knew I needed a degree to progress my way to the top of middle-management.  And in that I have succeeded; chime the bells; call in the band, middle-management in middle class America; I can proudly or not so proudly say?

That longing that desire, that constant anxious, sometimes annoying feeling that I must do better, I must do more with my time, my energy; others do it, I have to keep trying.  I must use my wandering mind for good and not evil.  I must use it to succeed.

I am coming up on my 40th year.  It’s been a time of reflection for me as I and have set what I believe to be a very realistic goal.  I shall have my memoir, yes, this memoir, completed by the end of my 40th year.  My memoir shall include a reflection on all my failures.  I will account for one failure per year until I reach 40 to commemorate my 40 years on this earth living as a 40-year-old failure. Forty failures in forty chapters. A goal; I’ve set a goal and it’s challenging but at least obtainable.  I shall succeed.  How hard could it actually be to write 40 chapters about the things that rattle through my mind at any given time. Let’s get going and see what a middle-class, almost 40-year-old Michiganian has to say.

Chapter Two: L&P Lawn Care

There’s really no way to even recall where or when it all started.  What was the first grand idea; when grand ideas were nothing more than un-conceived embryos in a young, soon to be entrepreneur’s brain. 

Soon to be entrepreneur, now that had a good ring to it.  I could be enterprising and had more initiative than most I knew.  I wasn’t scared to be responsible for any outcomes that came my way.  I wasn’t scared to take a risk; or was I?  In all honesty, I guess that was always dependent on what was at stake. 

Over the years I never had capital, so everything I had to invest into this enterprise was my everyday income, so a risk it was.  Either I maintained my day-to-day living style, or I took one of these risks at enterprising.  Sacrificing my day-to-day living style for a grand idea such as mine seemed only a temporary discomfort that was sure to pay off in the long run. I didn’t live a lavish, self-indulging life by any means.  In my younger days, I could spare to give up the one pair of new sneakers I bought for myself every two years or give up the occasional night out drinking Natural Light beer (or as I called it Financial Light) with my crony’s, but would these sacrifices consist of enough to start this business enterprise; highly unlikely.  So, what were my choices? I didn’t have investors, but I never sought out any either.  It isn’t that I didn’t think I could sell my grand ideas to an investor or two, what it truly came down to be the fact that I always feared that someone would steal my grand ideas and launch it before I had the occurrence to.  I’d heard of this happening on more than one occasion and with my luck or lack of it, in the back of my mind I always feared this.  That someone with a nest egg of money would hear of my grand idea and scoop it up like a free sample of cheese at the local grocery and make my thousands with them.  Remember I never thought I’d become a millionaire at any of my grand ideas; just a secure, steady income, so millions never even occurred to me at this time. 

I guess the best place to start is with one of the few enterprises I actually got off the ground. The sad thing is that it was when I was 13 years old.  Still, it has to be accounted for because it was an actual business, as much of a business that a 13-year-old could create.  I don’t want to think about it, but it may have even been the most lucrative business, since as you’ll soon see most of my brilliant ideas were merely conceptual.

I can’t count the lawn care business as solely my own, I had a 50/50 partner who happened to be my longtime friend of many years, 8 years to be exact; but at 13 that was nearly a lifetime.  We both had gumption that was a fact, we both had capitalist spirits that was true, and we had approximately 8 accounts that kept us busy every weekend for several years.  I remember our trips to the First of America bank located about 2 blocks away that we walked to every week to make our deposits into our self-owned savings accounts.  The feeling was rich, exciting, and I believe started my life-long pursuit for a grand idea that would make me thousands as I watched my account grow over the years.

Our business had no legal name, but we often dreamed of making flyers and seeing in neatly stenciled hand-written letters, the words, L & P Lawn Care, Mowing, raking, and weed whacking.  Advertisement was sure to add to our long list of accounts and was sure to double our income.  We had pie in the sky ideas as 13-year olds that we could make this business work and in no time at all we’d be self-employed power figures in the world of teenage, summer lawn care.  For some reason we never pursued that advertising campaign, I somewhat recall making a couple of flyers on construction paper, but after only a couple, the stenciling became sloppy and a trip to the copy store back then wasn’t an option; there was no copy store so where would we get copies made in 1983?  Sure, we had some other limitations, we could only venture out as far as we could push our mowers; we dreamed of the day we could drive to our accounts. How much easier would this make it, we could put the mowers in the trunk, carry an extra gas can, the weed whacker, maybe even a couple bottles of Faygo so we’d have them the minute we completed the job.  We also had to go to school for 8 hours a day, do homework and at 14 we both started working real jobs as car-hops at the local root beer stand, so time was limited, but maybe, just maybe one day we would do it.

Tragically that someday never came, as we turned 15 and then 16, sure we kept the accounts we already had, but it was hard to squeeze in more even now that we could drive.  Driving was almost our downfall.  Now, we had to make time to drive to the mall, drive to the bank, drive to the party, etc, etc.  The one thing we thought would improve our business and make us grow seemed to take up the extra time that could have been used in our entrepreneurial pursuit, or maybe, we were just teenagers.

Is it even fair to say that I failed at the ripe old age of 15?  Can this be counted as a failure? It was the first time when I had an idea, seen a way to improve upon it, make it grow, and failed to act accordingly, but a failure?

Failure:  The condition or fact of not achieving the desired end or ends; the condition or fact of being insufficient or falling short; nonperformance of what is requested or expected.  Yep, I guess we have to count it.

Chapter Three: Nurse’s Aide

After high school I had one goal in mind, move out and be free, but I also wanted to go to community college and study criminal justice.  Life in 1989 was a lot different as an 18-year-old then it is today.  Back then we all dreamt of moving out and having our own apartment, our own space, free from parents looking over our shoulders every minute of the day. A lot different than 18-year olds these days or even 25-year olds who find comfort in living in their parent’s homes, socializing with their parents, hanging out with their parents and living in the same space as their parents.  I’m not judging; we Gen X’ers have created a loving and socially accepting relationship with our children that have caused them to want to be around us more than their peers. 

I graduated from high school in June and by August I had my first apartment.  It was in one of the seediest parts of town and I shared it with one of my best high school girl friends.  It was a one bedroom, one-bathroom apartment for $295 a month; if you paid by the 1st of each month.  I mention the paid by the 1st part because as 18-year olds we were never fortunate enough, or I guess I should say responsible enough to get the pay by the 1st discount.  We paid $315 each month after the first month of the lease.  What we could have done with that extra $25; like eat maybe?

I was working two jobs at this time, both part time, but trying to pick up as many hours as I could, so part time turned into working 60 hours a week at $3.15 an hour at both jobs.  Now that might seem like a good income for an 18-year-old, but after taxes, I was lucky to bring home $120 a week. This wasn’t nearly enough to pay my ½ of the rent ($157.50,) a $180 a month car payment, $70 a month car insurance, gas, utilities, food, entertainment, and so on.  Looking at it like this, you can see that I was more than struggling financially and often didn’t eat for several meals at a time. I even picked up a few hours here and there at the old root beer stand, but still I couldn’t make ends meet.  I filled up on free root beer while I was there though, I can assure you that.  I recall very few days when I wasn’t hungry, I mean really hungry. You might be able to classify a half-starving teenager as a failure, but it just doesn’t seem right, does it?

I mentioned community college.  I signed up for fall semester, picked my classes, as did my roommate and we were on our way to a criminal justice degree. We picked the same exact classes of course and had the same aspirations. Classes started at 6:00 P.M. on Tuesday; I still recall this to this day.  She and I walked to the door of our first class at 5:58 P.M., looked inside, seen a class full of people and no two chairs located together; we had to sit together of course and that didn’t appear to be an available option.  We turned to each other and said, nothing happens on the first day of school anyway, let’s just come back to Thursday’s class.  The next day, Wednesday, we went to our next class, sat through 4 hours of lecture, took our homework assignments with us and went home.  We went back to the Thursday class that we chose to miss on Tuesday and to our surprise we had an assignment due.  We were behind the 8 ball already and it was the second day of class.  We both listened to the instructor and learned that at the third