This isn’t a post about art. But it begins with bad art because that’s what I produced today. To wit:

I labored on it all afternoon. I thought about what I wanted to do for days before that. And it sucks. Don’t tell me otherwise.

I’m posting it because it’s bad. Because all my life I’ve felt that if I do bad work (especially bad artwork), I’m a bad person — a valueless person that others will simply laugh at. And I need to get over that. So posting a crappy piece of art is therapy for me.

But this also isn’t a post about my personal angst. It’s about failing and going on.

J.D. Roth wrote the other day about failing financially and going on. His post was one of the things that got me going on this topic. He said, “Failure is okay.”

And it is. Besides, he gives good advice that goes well beyond his self-chosen beat of personal finance.

Another inspiration was stumbling across the blog of an artist, Christopher Greco, who has set himself the challenge of doing one painting every day and posting every one of them, good or bad, without censoring himself. I don’t think he’s actually managing a painting a day. But pretty close. And his goal is awesome.

When he misses, he doesn’t give up. He just goes on.

Recently, I gave somebody a plaque that said, “If at first you don’t succeed, skydiving isn’t for you.”

But skydiving is one of the few cases where that’s so.

As freedomistas we fail (and have failed and will fail) over and over again. Sometimes we fail because we’re trying to change a system that’s got more inertia than we realize. Other times our failings are more personal: We don’t believe in the welfare state, but times get so hard we accept food stamps; we want to build a country retreat but the spouse is adamantly against it; we try to organize a community effort, only to feel as if we’re herding the proverbial cats.

None of this means that it’s not worth the effort. Or that it’s impossible. It only means we need to re-evaluate, screw our heads back on, and try again in a different way.

And perhaps fail all over again.

I don’t know why it is, but some failures are easy and some are hard, and the difficulty may have nothing to do with the importance of the goal.

I can produce a mediocre piece of writing occasionally and shrug it off. To create one single piece of bad art horrifies me to the point where I wasn’t able to produce any art at all for decades. I was frozen. Locked up. Paralysed. Until I stumbled upon a copy of The Artist’s Way at a garage sale and followed its program.

Even now, though, it isn’t easy, and I’m petrified every time I try something new. Doing the above pastel painting today I was nearly hyperventilating, I was so terrified of screwing up.

I’ve posted it solely to tell myself, “Look, you can do bad work and nobody’s going to hate you for it. Life will go on. You might even try again and get better. It won’t freakin’ kill you!”

It’s so true that we teach what we need to learn. Tonight I almost feel like a hypocrite for talking about failing and going on.

But when it comes to the pursuit of freedom, I think a lot of us need the reminder: You fail; you get back up; you go on.

It’s just what you do. Art is optional. If you truly love and want freedom there’s no other course.