So many Successes Start With Unabashed Failures

Many of the greatest businesses and companies in the world were at one point utter failures. We all know this to be a true statement, and yet it is very rarely that we actually apply this logic to our own lives. There is a relevant reason as to why I am bringing this up today- mainly that about a year ago I made a big mistake, and I only now have come to terms with it for long enough to make a change.

Okay, maybe I was being a bit overblown by saying it was a big mistake, or any kind of significant mistake at all in the scheme of things; and yet, it was large enough that it made a decent impact on the way I worked.

I can admit that I suffer with incredible perfectionism, to the point where one small mistake would mean throwing out the baby with the bathwater. If only I could count the amount of times that I smashed Sculpey figurines because I made a mark in the wrong place as a kid. Seriously folks, things don’t change- I essentially did the same thing in the recent past, only this time it wasn’t a clay figure I could just rebuild. It was my personal ability to blog and put myself out there in the rudimentary form of writing.

It’s just this- I designed a blog for my own use relating to my experiences in marketing, got excited, flipped the entire thing in one sitting (let this be a lesson- regardless of if it’s a blog or a company, changing things overnight on a whim is a recipe for complete failure), only to realize that I had overshot my goals. Then I walked away.

Regardless of all of the ambition that I had put on this site, it was never meant to be a forum for marketers of the millennial generation to come together and talk about how great marketing is. One thing that I have learned over the last few months is that being in marketing is more akin to being a lawyer than being a social worker (sorry, guys. Generally speaking, it’s true.) We do not all hold hands- in fact, I have no doubt that if you offered a hand to one of your classmates, you would get less of a figurative bite than a literal one. For the most part, we are in this for ourselves, and anybody that says otherwise is lying. So here I am, no longer putting this site up as a forum, but as a conversation between you and I, where we can sit down as individuals and talk about the state of things.

“Melanie, you are so totally having a complex right now. What happened?”

I haven’t exactly gotten to that yet- but I will now. My desire for a writing partner went full-speed from inquiring about partnerships to basically pleading people to hear me out. It wasn’t pretty, I got slapped around a few times (not literally- but according to pain studies, your brain is unable to differentiate between emotional and physical pain. So one could say it had the same impact on me), and ended up being just as bitter as the rest of them. Not even close, actually- I’ll be a marketer that claims that I’m here to tell your story, and I mean it- and as I had not realize previous to my experiences, I can do it on my own. I am a student marketer, and here is my story!

So tld;dr, yup, in any words, take this as my apology, and a promise to write more. I can be in defense of marketing and show how much it can mean to the storytelling process without being a lawyer-type. After all, I am not in this career path for my own health (I mean this when I say it), I am here because I am in love with the stories of other people, and even though I could never make it as a writer, I can tell their stories through the immersion process.

With that, I give the farewell to Marquetting, and the hello to a site of my namesake- but which is equally if not more about you.