Winning by Failing

Both years later, one with the wisdom of age

Art by the author, using Leonardo AI and Canva

Thanks to Joe Forrest for this idea.

There’s a saying in Yiddish that fits here.

I don’t yet know how to say it in Yiddish, but I know if it is in broken English:

“Ve grow too soon oldt and too late shmardt”

Here are two of my past failures, one from which I got “shmardt, one where I did after getting “oldt”. Well, “oldter.”

I spoke about this before:

In 1990, I finished my Canada Counsel-funded Animation script and landed my first full-time Animated film job. I worked at Montréal’s premier Animated film company, Cine Groupe, in the Recoupe department.

We took previously used drawings, found and fixed continuity errors or uneven drawings in an image or scene, taped them together, and filed them away for reuse.

My film script left me arrogant, and I did many dumb things because of it:

• Late lunches
• LONG naps in bathrooms
• Shoddy work, little because of the above

I got fired within a month.

Lessons I learned:

• This wasn’t professional of me. For…