The Business of Failing Dreams

The day announced itself to be unseasonably hot.

Howard liked to collect words and sayings, platitudes and maxims (like unseasonably hot). He felt it was a requirement from his self as a word-smith.

He was a collector of words, with his only struggle, the accurate stringing them up together, so they made sense and create a work of art.

Howard was a firm believer in himself. He knew that he was destined for greatness!

Why else would he have been blessed with such a wonderful mind, inquisitive spirit and tireless imagination? All of these had a purpose, and Howard was sure that purpose was greatness.

Howard had had a normal, uneventful upbringing, his school years were spent in the comfortable middle, his teenage years and young adulthood a continuous search for the greatness that was due.

One thing that Howard had in spades was perseverance. Howard seemed unable to give up no matter how frustrating or fruitless his efforts were.

Howard kept at it, working to survive and striving to create until now, when we find him in his fifty first year, an illustrious nobody.

Howard had been lucky enough to have inherited his small apartment on the North side of Dublin from an aunt he had not particularly liked. When the news of her passing and of her will came though, she had become his favorite aunt, and his memory started to filter out all sorts of events that were more or less accurate in their depiction.

The apartment had allowed Howard to leave the room he was renting in a way too crowded house, and to have some extra money to invest in his passion and life pursuit.

What everybody knew, because Howard never failed to mention it, was that Howard had written a book.

For over a year, with huge determination, Howard worked on his book in every spare moment he got. When the book was finished Howard tried his hardest to get it published, but to his dismay no publisher was interested in his story of love and loss, set in a rural Irish village.

Howard loved his book with a passion, and he was sure that all he needed to do was to get it out there, in readers’ hands, and it will be an instant hit.

Howard saved all his money, took out a small loan and printed the book himself.

That moment when he held his book in his hands for the first time, that moment was the most wonderful moment in all his life.

Howard was so convinced that his book will be a success, that he ordered as many copies as he could afford, which of course meant that, his small apartment was suffocated with countless parcels filled with printed paperback copies of his wonderful book.

Because space was tight, Howard set about arranging his beloved books in such a way that would allow them all to coexist in the small apartment.

Extremely focused, he only thought about how to arrange them all over the place, without any concern to how his home will look in the end.

Howard put the books anywhere and everywhere there was an empty space that could fit one. So, when he was done his space looked like an altar to the book he so loved. His book!

Howard laughed at himself looking at the stacks of books supporting his bed:

‘I’d better not write another too soon … or at least not print it for sure!’

Howard took some photos of his home and shared them online with the question:

‘Want one?’, and a link with the description of the book.

As it turned out, people online fell in love with his story, but sadly not with his book. It did not matter to Howard though, it had been a labor of love, and even God loves all his children!

Bookshops contacted Howard and eased him of his stock, and soon his very unsuccessful book was sold out, and Howard just knew that it was his duty to write another one.

‘Maybe that will sell also … by itself this time!’, Howard chuckled to himself on the way to his agent, because now, yes, yes Howard, had an agent all to himself.

Sometimes failing really is much better than succeeding!

You just need to give yourself the chance to fail!

Or succeed, whichever comes your way …

It might surprise you!