As much as I’d love to share some detailed, harrowing, goopy account of me falling flat on my face, complete with shame, despair, grief, and maybe some “rising from the ashes,” instead, I’m gonna offer up some pointers. I'm from the Midwest, and back there, there’s no room for rash decisions.

You gotta think things through. You agonize over things. Perhaps unnecessarily. But you weigh things for a bit, and then you make a decision. And I’d like to think that cautious problem-solving has helped guide me in my life. So instead of sharing war stories, let’s talk about being proactive, and how to build a somewhat fail-proof life.

And just know, the whole time I’m writing this mess, all I can think about is, “Wait a second, bud. Are you implying that you’ve never failed?” That’s not the case. When I step back and analyze what I’ve done, I get this nervous sweat going, thinking, hell, how this whole thing I call a career might just be one big “real-time” failure and I don’t even know it. Fun mental space, right? Remains to be seen.