Failing for the first time

This is my combat robot, Inertial.

Bless her heart, she is currently the lowest ranked 12lb robot on the NHRL rankings

Let's talk about failure and what it feels like to fail at something for the first time.

Never failing

Growing up, I mostly excelled at everything I did.

I was decent at sports, not terrible but not an amazing player. Solid middle of the pack when it came to sports.

But an athelete? I was pretty impressive. Ran provincials at cross country, ran triathlons in university, did the Triple Crown in Vancouver at age 20.

Lot's of fairly impressive things.

As a musician, I was also pretty solidly middle of the pack. Never a great musician, not the best at playing the euph but was pretty good at it.

Middle of the pack in those two areas.

But academically? I was top of my year. Undeniably the best student in my elementary, undeniably top one or two in my highschool, graduated university with the highest GPA in my program and the award to prove it.

In a lot of ways, academics were how a lot of comparisons happened growing up. Comparisons between my other academically minded friends, my peers, and my siblings. A lot of the time it came down to academics as a measuring stick, a way to easily compare ourselves to each other.

Then I graduated and went on to work for one of the most desirable (and well paying) companies in the field. Getting raises, getting congratulated on my achievements, etc etc.

Excelling in every area that was academic or intellectual.

I was good socially too. Made good friends, had attempts at romance, nothing too spectacular in either area but certainly not failing at either of them.

Again, at least middle of the pack in those areas too.

So yeah, middle of the pack in most areas of life, but excelling in academics of all kinds.

So in a very real way, I truly felt like I had never really failed at anything before.

Exposure

In 2025, I decided to start building a combat robot. I was watching NHRL and was like god damn this looks like so much fun.

I thought I could pick up the skills and just build a 12lb combat robot and do pretty good, I had high expectations for myself.

In a lot of ways it felt like an academic activity, a competition of engineering skill, and I had a lot of confidence in my ability to design and build something that was good.

Oh boy how wrong I was.

Four competitions later and my bot is sitting dead last in the rankings.

Not even middle of the pack, undeniably last place.

And in a very real way, this is a refreshing experience.

I won't get into the details of how Inertial failed (that's fully documented on it's wiki page), but I wanna talk about what it feels like to fail at something like this.

It feels safe. It feels refreshing. It feels eye opening to just be really really really bad at something.

. . .

Everyone fails at something eventually.

This will happen early in life, later in life, whatever. Everyone fails at something eventually. They believe themselves to be capable at something, put effort into it, and then fail to meet their expectations.

This happens to everyone eventually.

For me, this really feels like the first time I've truly, undeniably, failed at something.

And I'm glad it happened like this.

It happened in a hobby I poured countless hours and literal blood, sweat, and tears into sure, but it isn't a failure in something that will drastically change the course of my life.

Not a failure to get into university, not a failure to get a job, not a failure at my job, etc etc.

It was a failure in my fun little competitive hobby.

A safe community where builders and commentators love my unique design and my funny little robot.

"Inertial has the sauce" is still one of my favorite quotes from one of the commentators.

But undeniably, a place where I've failed to meet my own expectations and felt the bitter feeling of defeat, watching my robot fail to function on a basic level (and also have its guts violently ripped out).

Failure is good, actually

Failure is generally a good thing, really, kinda, let me explain.

Failure is a good thing in a safe setting where you aren't punished for it.

Failure is healthy and pushes you to do better if you fail in a space where you are supported and encouraged through your failures, rather than punished for them.

NHRl is a very safe and healthy place to fail.

The workplace or school can be very unhealthy places to fail, and unfortunately those places are where most people have their first real experiences of failure.

I just got lucky in making it so long without having a true failure before.

Modelling failure

If I ever raise kids, or have the chance to be a teacher or other kind of role model, I want to be able to model failure for kids in this kind of healthy way.

A way where we can teach children that it's okay to fail, failure is inevitable, and that failure won't be punished.

Teaching them that failing at things is okay and how you learn.

Teaching them that failing at things is motivation and growth and lots of other good things.

Teaching them that failing at things is just a natural part of having drive and ambition.

Not punishing them for not meeting our expectations and desires.

. . .

Anyway soapbox rant over, I suck at combat robots, have a nice day!

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