Sometimes Failing is as Important as Succeeding
When I was in college I worked as a volunteer for the 2002 Winter Olympics. The application process and the training program were exciting. (The clothes were cool, too.) I was assigned as a personal assistant to the Austrian team. I was bubbling with anticipation.

The experience turned out to be a disappointing one. The Olympic Committee had engaged far too many volunteers and the Austrian team arrived with its own staff in tow. I spent most of my service hours sitting around a table with other volunteers, hoping someone might eventually need us for something. We were highly qualified people with busy, active lives. There wasn't a single one of us who couldn't think of five better ways we could have been using our time.

I might have been tempted to regret the experience, but a fellow volunteer (a university professor whose class I had taken the semester before) taught me otherwise. "Well," he said. "Now we know. Now we know we didn't miss anything. If we hadn't volunteered, we might have spent the next fifty years wondering if we'd opted out on the Chance of a Lifetime."

The older I get, the more valuable those words become to me.

I'm working on a lot of speculative projects right now. My novel might turn out to be a flop. My kids might be a nightmare as teenagers. Any one of a dozen different efforts might not pan out.

But you know what? If they don't, at least then I'll know. I won't lie awake nights asking myself whether I could have made that bestseller list. I won't spend my life wondering what might have happened if I'd been brave enough to step up to the plate and give it a try.