Encouraging failure is one of the best things that I’ve discovered in the last years. I’m not sure why, nor if this is a general feeling, but failing is a big deal.
I’ve talked a bit about this feeling on my first post, fear is not necessary a bad thing if you know how to handle it, and I’ve found that embracing it is the best way for me to deal with it.
Well, seems like embracing things works fine for me. The more I think about, the more I’m convinced that embracing failure is the way to go. While this has been in the back of my head for some time, today it hit me like a truck.
I’m visiting Buenos Aires and today I headed to the Museum of Modern Art. If you happen to be around, I recommend you to visit it; it’s awesome. One of the galleries exposes some of the work of Antonio Berni, an Argentinian artist well known for his socially committed art. It is a very exhaustive set of pieces, most of them taken from Berni’s drafts and private collections.
While most of the pieces of the collection are good, not all them are on the same level. I know art is subjective, but there were some pieces that he used as a way to explore. They were never meant to be one of his masterpieces.
Here is the craft of exploration on his best. He allowed himself to play and have fun while exploring. I can’t tell if he wasn’t afraid to fail, but I can tell that he was extremely passionate about what he was doing, and he allowed himself to try.
Art at his best is born from exploration but I believe that the concept is not limited to Art, it can be applied to everything.
This hit me as a programmer and made me realize that I’m not having enough fun, I’m not coding enough fun things because I’m waiting for the best idea to come, for the best library to write.
Trust is, everything in life is about passion, and not being able to play and have fun kills passion.
So starting today I want to have fun while coding. I’m going to code a ton of projects that I have in my todo-list waiting for me but postponed because they were not perfect ideas. And I’m going to let me write poor code, not intentionally, of course, I will do my best, but guess why? All code sucks at some extent.