Hello, and welcome to 2024! I hope you’re well-rested and ready for the year ahead.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about my extreme reactions to making mistakes. Last year was full of them — small and big. There were a lot of ugly tears each time something went wrong. Whether I misjudged a situation, lost something, missed an email or forgot to attend a scheduled Zoom meeting, I zoned in on the mistake and got obsessive with it. I find that I get especially self-destructive when I understand that I can’t fix a situation and that nothing can ‘undo’ the initial misstep.
My first big mistake (or accident, really) occurred last January when I lost an expensive gold earring gifted to me by my mum. It was in the baggage reclaim area of Heathrow Airport that I realised it must have slipped out of my ear on the plane. At this point, I couldn’t go back. What’s worse is that the real mistake occurred 18 months prior, when I failed to replace the back of the earring after it fell off in a park. Had I used the original back, the incident probably wouldn't have happened, nor would I have lost a diamond stud a few months later under similar circumstances. Now I can’t afford to replace them and am reminded of my failure each time I open my jewellery box.
Then there was the time my partner and I didn’t bring our registration papers when leaving Uzbekistan because we assumed information like that would get updated in an internal electronic database. We were subsequently threatened to pay thousands of dollars in fines at the Kyrgyz border — money we didn’t have. We were on our way to a music festival on a wild beach of the Issyk Kul lake, and a bus full of people and our bags were waiting for us to be released from bureaucratic purgatory. Somehow, we got away with it. But only just. I was left shaken for days.
A few months later, I was also alerted to failing to anonymise a name in a quote I used for an article. Although I wasn’t explicitly instructed to do so by my interviewee, I should have recognised the sensitivity of the topic and taken the initiative to anonymise the given name. The interviewee, someone I considered to be friendly with, did not respond to my sincere apologies or efforts to rectify the mistake. Instead, they unfollowed me on Instagram. Fair enough, but I felt awful.
More recently, I spent days on a job application but missed the email inviting me to interview a few weeks later. I spiralled for an entire weekend because it was a dream job and my inattention made all my efforts feel wasted. In what seemed like a miracle, they let me interview and I got through to the final round. So that one doesn’t sting as much anymore.
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Making a mistake feels really bad. It begins as a small knot in my stomach that slowly grows outwards until it has enveloped me entirely. The shame is so physical. I tend to curl forward and press my palms into my eye sockets until I start seeing purple patterns in an expanse of black. In the moment, I feel like the sum of all my mistakes.
The shame often comes in the form of mean thoughts:
You’re all over the place.
Why are you so stupid?
You can’t be trusted with anything.
This is why you don’t deserve nice things.
Lately, I’ve begun to suspect that others may not experience such deep shame over their own human errors, which is why I tried to turn to the internet for answers. So I did what I normally do, go on Google to type in random symptoms followed by the word “autism” and hope to find out what the hell might be going on up there. No one seemed to have a good answer beyond the generic “don’t be so hard on yourself” platitudes. Not even Polly from The Cut, or the weirdos from Quora.
At this point, I’ve read all sorts of articles on perfectionism, rejection sensitivity dysphoria, and how mistakes can lead to meltdowns and rigid thinking, all of them perfectly describing everything I outlined above. I’ve dug into every “childhood trauma” I can remember. I can rationalise everything logically, but in the moment, the advice doesn’t stop me from feeling like the world is about to end.
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I often call my mum when I’ve made a mistake. No matter what she’s got on in her workday, she tries to drop everything to soothe me. In one of our recent mistake-related phone call sessions, she pointed out to me that my little brother, who is six, also hates making mistakes. In many ways, I see myself in him. We are both very sensitive.
To calm him down, my parents have started to sing him a song from a cartoon that goes something like this:
It’s okay to make mistakes
It’s okay to trip and fall
We’ll be here to pick you up
Come on, let’s try one more time!
At first, he is shy and reluctant to join in; then, he cracks a smile and starts singing along with them.
These days, I also find comfort in this song written for toddlers.
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I was in the queue for McDonald’s in Denver International Airport (yes, the one with the evil horse statue colloquially named ‘Blucifer’) when I took out my Monzo card to pay for the cheeseburger meal I was about to order. Only I forgot that two hours before, I had stuffed my British SIM card in my tiny card holder on top of that same card. As I was finishing my fries, I began the process of swapping over SIM cards before boarding my flight, only my tiny British SIM card was nowhere to be found.
I felt it coming. The dread. The panic. I started Googling how easy it was to replace SIM cards in the UK. I started running the scenarios of what this now meant, trying to judge the scale of the tragedy. It’s okay to make mistakes. I emptied out my tiny black bag to see if the SIM had fallen out in there. Then, I noticed cleaning staff hovering over the food court area. It’s okay to trip and fall. I swiftly packed all my things into my bag and joined the queue for McDonald’s again. Retracing steps meant there was still a chance for resolution. We’ll be here to pick you up. I tried to breathe evenly. The line moved slowly, and the SIM card wasn’t on the floor. What would I say as I approached the cashier? Come on, let’s try one more time! Then I saw it, hiding below a card reader. I came up, swiped it and explained what had just happened to a confused server.
I held it tightly in between my fingers until I reached my gate and replaced my SIM cards. That was close. But you know what? I’m not sure I would have cried.
What I’ve been working on lately:
I am patiently working on my book proposal. It’s taking forever, but it’s happening, and I’m excited for it!
I’m also hoping to get back into freelance writing and reporting in the next few months, but I need to wrap up some big research projects and start my new part-time job next week!
There are big news coming in regards to hothouse bookclub. Keep your eyes peeled!
What I’ve loved reading:
I did not read enough last year. Travelling really got in the way of that! BUT I have enjoyed picking up a few titles over the holidays:
I finally read Lazy City by Rachel Connolly (of the Who Knows? newsletter). I love Rachel’s writing and her ability to pack so much meaning into her observations. I really savoured this one.
I also read Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman, and I must admit the book wasn’t the self-help book that I thought it was going to be. The premise is that the average life is only four thousand weeks, so Burkeman urges the reader to confront the fact that time is a limited resource and that no amount of self-optimisation means that you can do everything that’s being thrown at you. At some point, you have to make important decisions. A sobering read.
I also read Good Material by Dolly Alderton and appreciated the exploration of multiple truths within a single romantic story.
One is always harder with oneself. Good reflections