> but it's a bad fetish
Thanks for that -- I couldn't agree more.
I read comments talking about how awful it is that there are success biographies and I can't help but feel pity half the time. Like it or not, if you go into something expecting failure, you might as well skip it. For a lot of folks, the "failure fetish" serves only to reinforce an attitude that "the reason they're (insert desire here) and I'm not is luck. The vast majority fail, so I shouldn't bother.". My Dad's attitude, to us kids, was to finish that of with ", but they're not me." But he had many, many failures along the way, he just addressed each problem and landed on the right decisions enough that his company continued to grow/establish itself until the scariest of those problems started to vanish.
Inwardly, my Dad's attitude was less certain, but still landed somewhere at "It's just another problem, I've solved the last several successfully, I can solve this one", but ultimately, he knew the totality of the risk he was taking -- outright bankruptcy, losing a really, really nice house, not to mention the emotional effects such a catastrophic failure to provide for your family would be. He didn't focus on the "worst-case scenario" (partly because every one of his problems had the same worst-case scenario), because your options are rarely that binary -- while it might be "fail to pay the bill and they cut off service" it's often "if I call before the bill is due, I can get another month or a partial payment will cover us" -- another problem created, but an improvement to having the lights shut off. When the engine fails in-flight, the choice is one of many, many bad options, but "an emergency landing at a different, nearby, airport" beats "setting her down in the clearing just after those trees". As much has he flew, there are tens of stories that should have ended with the plane creating a burning crater, but even when the engine cut out over Lake Michigan in the "you're swimming" zone, he managed to problem solve his way to an airport.
It really feels sometimes there's a plague of jealousy-masquerading-as-concern (or worse, Nanny-ism) -- it hasn't gotten terrible here compared to other forums, but it's everywhere these days. It's almost shun-worthy to imply that someone achieved success through hard work[0]. As if saying so implies that people who are unsuccessful don't work hard, or that working hard, alone, will only guarantee you'll be tired, that knowing your market/product and being a really good problem solver are as important and that even then, you're going to put up with a lot of external BS for the privilege of choosing how you want to make money. And if you want the privilege of offering work to someone, there's a whole lot more you're going to enjoy. If you ever make the mistake of implying that the person who worked so hard for said money deserves the money they took such risks/worked so hard for, well, good luck with that (oops).
[0] I even feel the need to bullet-point-out that "obviously that's not the only factor, it's just the only one that's going to work for you since Mom/Dad aren't paying your paycheck".