Failing, Entertainment, and Wands

Failing is Success Training!

Author

Kevin Gallagher
March 07, 2023

Ok… almost regularly scheduled programming!

I missed last week, but in my defense… OK, I don’t have one! The good news, I didn’t wait too long to get the next one out. I’m still easing my way into all the different projects I have my hands in and writing continues to be the one that continues to move forward the most. However, I did have a very productive conversation last week about podcasting and community, very specifically as it pertains to the Greater Philadelphia Area. I’m hoping to be able to share more bout that soon!

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Failing

And why it’s OK to fail.

OK, this will be very similar to the previous topic about loss. In fact, I used the above quote to wrap up that topic—don’t expect this kind of synergy every week. However, over this past weekend, my oldest had his regional Odyssey of the Mind competition. You can probably guess how things went by the subject, but we’ll get there.

OotM is a great program that gets kids thinking beyond the norm. It embraces and teaches kids how to use their natural creativity to become problem solvers. Leading up to the competition, I only got to see bits and pieces of what they really did to prepare, but I was amazed at everything they were doing and all the hard work the team put in. The crowning achievement came this past Saturday when they got to put all their hard work to the test.

As a parent, the biggest takeaway was “oh, this is an all-day thing”. We checked in at 9 am and didn’t get home until about 9 pm. My proudest moment was seeing how much the kids improved from the one time I saw about 75% of their performance for their long-term problem. That practice session was a failure. The set was collapsing, they had music issues, and they only had 4 of the 6 member team. That failure was a blessing though!

They were able to take what went wrong and fix it. Stabilize the sets that collapsed, fine-tune the musical issues, and have a backup plan if they had to go to the competition with less than a full team. And seeing them perform at the competition, you could see how much they improved. Were they perfect? No. But they were good. And, to their credit, they didn’t lose that portion of the competition.

OotM tests you on two things—a long-term problem that you spend months preparing for and a spontaneous problem that they only know will be one of a handful of types. While they can practice many different spontaneous problems, it’s just practice to flex that part of their brain. At the competition, they faced a problem they never saw before.

And, well, unfortunately, the kids didn’t place to move forward to the State competition. It wasn’t the outcome they wanted, but they still crushed it in my opinion. While I can’t speak for the kids, especially those that aren’t mine, I can say that my son has been very lucky in any kind of competition the last few years-—he hasn’t experienced this kind of loss before. He won his baseball championship game a few years ago and won his soccer championship last year. This was the next big thing he really wanted to win, and they just missed. But, that’s OK, because failure helps increase knowledge and skills and produces stronger follow-up attempts that make the odds of a victory even greater.

January’s Entertainment

But Kev, shouldn’t we review February’s entertainment??? I suspect I may have another post this week, so we’ll catch you up on that in that post. Worst case scenario, it’ll be in next week's newsletter. But we never discussed what I enjoyed in January! You can read the full recap here, but in summary:

  • I read four books and started a fifth.

    • Wayward, by Chuck Wendig, is the book I started and it’s very good, but a whopping 800 pages!

  • I read nineteen comic books.

    • Most of this was the Batman/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles crossover comics.

  • Played forty-five minutes of video games, specifically My Singing Monster.

  • I watched thirteen movies.

    • My average rating was 3.88/5

  • I listened to thirty-four songs.

  • And forty-three podcasts.

  • Finally, I watched a whopping 69 episodes of TV!

    • Nice!

Media of the Week

The Mandalorian

The Mandalorian really changed the game for Star Wars, huh? Chances are, if you’re reading this newsletter, you’re probably already watching The Mandalorian, but if you aren’t, THEN GO BINGE SEASON 1 AND 2 RIGHT NOW! Season 3 just dropped last week and this is one of those shows were I always say “I want to watch more!”, I’m happy it’s released weekly and is a focal point of conversations for about 8 weeks or so. Very interested to see what this show is about now that it’s not about getting Grogu to “his people”.

Links of the Week

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CDL Truck Driving isn’t for the faint of heart—you’re on the road more than most people and most of the time you’re in a very big truck driving across the state or country. Check out That’s Entertainment for more info as LOUDAWG vlogs his journey as a CDL Truck Driver and watch his vlogs and rap music here.