Stacking Fails?

Today in my life...

‘Fails’ don’t seem to stack as easily as wins, or maybe they are harder to get to add up to something positive, but when that is what you got to work with...it’s usually worth a try.

The first thing I try to do is reframe “failures” as “feedback”. Work on my mindset--remember to take things one at a time instead of lumping it all together as one giant day of failure.

Then I start to stack:

1. The dentist is not going to be able to provide the affordable crown for a broken tooth as I hoped...I did already suspect that might be the case, so now I know I need to find a different dentist (Mexico, I got my eyes on you, again). This is progress, all part of the process of taking better care of myself. “Good job self. Keep up the good work, and thank goodness it is not nearly as painful as the last one.”

2. The vet clinic wouldn’t let my overly enthusiastic young dog through the surgical room door without a substantial quadruple dose of sedatives before neutering, which we had to reschedule for...so I got to educate myself more on the safety of pre-sedation vs the risks of severe stress, and feel better about it overall. Plus I am now in a good position to continue getting up before the butt-crack of dawn! Yawn.

3. The respite-care-provider course I found and completed today was not great--a bit dated, depressing, and mostly a review of things I have studied sooo many times now...which just means I am a bit overqualified for agency -provided respite and reaffirms what I was already knowing about working independently being the best fit for me, while also allowing me to register as a private care provider on a helpful website. That is clarity and confirmation, as well as a fresh round of certification.

One part in particular really got under my skin--elderly women with dementia, being handed cut-up pictures and told a worker “needed their help” putting them together. A manufactured purpose. A small, tidy con. That’s not care. That’s management. And somewhere, someone wrote a training curriculum around it. Sighs.

We’ve gotten very good at softening, scripting, smoothing off the rough edges. I call it The Great Domestication. The slow sanding down of anything too sharp, too real, too inconvenient. I have limited patience for it. Not because I’m harsh — because I think people deserve actual skin-to-skin contact with their own lives. I do my best not to be brutal about it.

What else?

I got to witness and hear the onset of today’s more blustery wind, like a massive ignition switch “WOOOOSH” down by the river. The sound startled the dogs and I, a few split seconds before a sudden dust devil sprang up and kicked off another afternoon of energy-sucking, ion-rich dry, desert wind...something I have never quite heard or seen before—at least, not quite like that. You had to be there I am sure—to really get the impact of it—and I was. A first for me after 50 years of living in this state.

I’m counting all of it as a win.

That’s a full ‘Four Win Stack’ out of a fairly unproductive-feeling day. I might even get out my guitar and make it a full handful.

I’m holding space for the Real. Not the curated, not the comfortable, not the properly packaged version. The Really Real. The edge of something great.

If that’s what you’re looking for too — you might be in the right place.

~ZG

ZGALA down by the river. April 2026. GAL Media. All Rights Reserved.