Diary of an Activist, Fear of Failure

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activism, activist, amanda reaume, Antigone Foundation, Antigone Magazine, Diary of an Activist, failure, fear, harry potter, harvard, J.K. Rowling, reaume

I think the hardest part of being an activist is the constant fear of failure that you experience. Especially when you are the one in charge, there can be a constant fear that the dreams and programs that you are proposing or organizing will not work out. There are so many things that could potentially go wrong. You might worry that you won’t get funding. That no one will care. That you won’t make a difference.

When you have the energy and ideas to do something that you believe is important and yet you can’t get the money or the interest or the political traction to ensure that the change or the event happens – this is very frustrating. Sometimes just the fear of not having the money, the interests or political traction is enough to cause you to rethink the whole project. What happens if you decide to organize an event and it fails. What is failure? It all depends on what your goals are and if your goals are quite ambitious… what you define as failure might be someone else’s wild success.

When the cause means so much to you, when your activist identity and self are so integrally wrapped up in the activist work that you are doing, then how frightening and disabling does fear of failure become? How do we push on in the face of fear and obstacles?

Right now, I am working on a number of projects for The Antigone Foundation. One example is the cross-Canada Dreams for Women Leadership Tour. The Cross-Canada Dreams for Women Leadership tour will involve the Antigone Foundation visiting at least 5 cities across Canada where we will run one day long Leadership Boot Camps with the help of local leaders, organizations, and volunteers. We will be providing leadership training to girls aged 10-30. The purpose is to get more young women involved in leadership, politics, activism, and feminism.

As I prepare to start coordinating the Dreams for Women Leadership Tour, I am afraid. I fear that no one will want to sponsor us. I fear that we will not be able to get women to participate. I fear that we will not be able to put the tour on.

I fear all these things. But I also know that this tour will change the worlds of many young women. I hope that it will inspire people. I hope that it will lead to action and achievement and change. This knowledge and these hopes are what keeps me pressing on through the fears and putting myself and my organization out there.

Have Antigone and I failed at a project in the past? According to our expectations (which are always to take over the world), yes. But each ‘failure’ has been incredibly useful and educational. Sometimes the few people who have come out to an event have been instrumental or we have changed the mind or educated one person. To me, that is success. But an event turning out as planned is also a great success and what I always work towards.

Working towards it can be hard but it is also a mental game which takes a lot of energy. The excitement and hope for the event must be stronger than the fear of what you will lose if you fail. It takes a lot of energy because you (as an activist) must try to manifest the dream and the vision that you have for the event. And by manifesting a big dream and vision you are making yourself vulnerable. You are putting out into the dirty, mean world, an ideal and a cherished hope and dream. The world is not easy on these hopes and dreams. It will mock them, thwart them, ignore them, laugh at them, have contempt for them and do everything it does to degrade and demean them, sometimes on purpose and sometimes by accident.

I find that sometimes when I experience disappointment, I shrink back into myself for fear that this taste of failure will spread across the whole project. I begin to question myself. Who am I to believe that I can do this? Who am I to be dreaming this big? I start imagining everything going terribly wrong and then I have a hard time continuing on. I think that is one of my biggest struggles; maintaining hope and direction in the face of criticism and disappointment. I think I am learning how to do that though. And that is making me a better activist. A more resilient one. A more focused and determined one.

I have experienced things recently that I would have once seen as a failure. But these failures have been quite productive and important to me. They have made me see what is really important to me and what I really desire to do and achieve. They have forced me to focus myself on the things that I truly care about rather than diffusing my energies over a number of different sources. I am feeling something akin to what J.K. Rowling spoke about during a commencement address she gave at at Harvard:

Failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was and I began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena where I truly belonged. I was set free because my greatest fear had been realized and I was still alive and I still had a daughter who I adored and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I built my life. You might never fail on the scale that I did but some failure is inevitable.

It is impossible to live your life without failing at something unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all. In which case, you fail by default. Failure gave me an inner security that I have never achieved by passing examinations. Failure gave me an inner security that I could not have attained any other way. I discovered that I had a strong will and more discipline than I had suspected. I also found out that I had friends whose value was more than rubies. The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to know yourself or the strength of your relationships.  It is a true gift that has been painfully won and it has been worth more than any qualification I have ever achieved.

Some Leaders Are Born Women, Edition 1

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activism, Antigone Magazine, feminism, Political Mavens, politics, power, women in politics, women world leaders

I have started a new blog and a new Antigone series about my attempts to write a book of interviews with female world leaders! Check it out at http://www.someleadersarebornwomen.wordpress.com!

Some Leaders are Born Women: What Young Women Should Know, is a project that I have been working on for over two and a half years. The idea first came to me when I contacted the Right Honourable Kim Campbell, Canada’s first female Prime Minister for an interview for Antigone Magazine, the magazine about women, politics, and the politics of being a woman that I founded and edit.  That night, lying awake unable to sleep (I am a recovering insomniac!) I thought about how remarkable it would be to interview female world leaders about their experiences in politics and their advice to young women today and collect those interviews into one book that could inspire a generation of young female politicians.

I was 22 at the time, and the type of person who is often swept away by the excitement of an idea. Of course, I would do this! It was a great idea! And, as a young woman myself, I was in a great position to be able to ask the type of questions that young women would want answers and advice on! The next morning I woke up and e-mailed a number of organizations working with women world leaders to ask them if any of them were interested in collaborating with me on the book. I did not get very many responses.

The ones that I got were encouraging but apologetic, they could not get involved with the project but wished me the best.  This is, of course, very typical. I get carried away with my own ideas and assume that other people will get swept away by them as well. But that is not always the case. I have been very lucky at certain points in my life to find the right person to help me nurture the right idea, but usually I have faced an uphill battle, obstacles, or even outright opposition.  Like everyone, I find it hard sometimes to keep going in the face of that opposition.  After a certain point, you begin to question yourself and wonder whether you are doing the right thing, whether you are capable of making your idea into reality. That is always the most difficult part of the journey.

This time, I want to invite the world along on my journey. In setting out to interview 14 women world leaders, I know that there will be some difficult and trying times along the way. There will be language barriers, emails that get unanswered, meetings that get rescheduled and politicians that are just unreachable. And in setting out to find publishers that will bring these interviews and the advice of these women to young women around the world, I know that there will likewise be setbacks. I will get rejections, I will be asked to change the scope or focus of the book, and I will have my emails or queries ignored.  But I will not give up.

That was, after all, how I finally got my interview with the Right Honourable Kim Campbell. It took about 8 months from when I sent the first request to when I actually interviewed the former Prime Minister. First, my email was sent to the wrong address, and then I finally found the right address and it turned out they had already responded to me… and I hadn’t received it. Even on the day of the interview, things were constantly changing as the Right Honourable Kim Campbell’s schedule was in flux. There was even the suggestion that I try interviewing her while chauffeuring her between two other interviews, a scenario which was shot down given that I did not have a car. But just as I finally found my 30 minutes to an hour with Ms. Campbell, I will most likely finally be able to interview the women on my list if I remain persistent and strategic!

And it is worth it that I do remain persistent because I truly believe that this book will be an important addition to the libraries of young women around the world. We all need people to look up to. Research shows that young women display greater interest in politics when they see women running or leading. I truly believe that we need more young women involved in politics. If I can help spark the interest of one young women by writing this book, so much the better!

So, join me for the ride. Subscribe to the blog. Register for my mailing list. The more people who come here and support this project, the more likely I will be able to get the attention of the women politicians and the publishing industry. Or people who know how to get in touch with the women themselves!

We can do this together.

What a Day!: An Interview on CBC Radio One, a Workshop with the BCCIC and Speed Dating…

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Antigone Magazine, BC Council of International Cooperation, CBC Radio One

Okay, so maybe there was no ‘speed dating’ per se… although there were a couple of jokes regarding speed dating because of the set up of the room where I did my workshop… But back to the things that actually happened. Like being interviewed by CBC Radio One’s ‘The Coast’ about Antigone Magazine and the workshop that I gave last night for the BC Council of International Cooperation. My workshop, entitled ‘Texts and Cybertexts: Zines, Blogs and the Politics of Change’ went over great! I spoke about the history of zines and blogs and some steps on how to create them and then we all worked together to make a collective zine.

Can anyone say cool? Honestly, what a great day! Check out the pictures from the workshop and the one at the beginning of the post from CBC’s studios (that’s me attempting to take over the airwaves). Now that I have a program put together for this workshop and for the talk that I did about women and politics, I’m more than willing to do workshops for any interested organizations. Just contact me (antigonemagazine@hotmail.com)… or you know go through my media people (I’m kidding).

For anyone who heard about Antigone from the CBC, here’s some more information about our magazine and blog:

Antigone Magazine is a semi-annual magazine about women and politics at the University of British Columbia. Founded by Amanda Reaume with the help of WILLA UBC (Women Involved in Legislative Leadership Association), the magazine was launched in November, 2006. Antigone seeks to be a publication about women, politics, women and politics and the politics of being a woman and has interviewed the likes of Kim Campbell and Elizabeth May.

Antigone is currently seeking to expand to other universities. If you are not a UBC student and would like to buy a yearly subscription ($12) please e-mail antigonemagazine@hotmail.com

Special thanks to Kate (my media tutor), Caro (my understanding boss who let me run off to the CBC in the middle of the workday), Meredith (my secretary/cheerleader), my mom (who taped the interview), Gillian (the cool woman from the CBC who tracked me down) and Kaitlin (my one and only Assistant Editor/Underling).

Antigone’s Editor (that’s me) is Doing a Talk for the BCCIC!

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Antigone Magazine, BC Council of International Cooperation

I will be doing a workshop at the BC Council for International Cooperation next Monday from 6:30-9:30 about the history of zines and blogs and how they have contributed to social movements! This is the cool poster that the BCCIC have put together to advertise the event. I’d love to see some of the blog’s readers out there so please RSVP asap as there are only about 10 spots left!

Zines, Blogs and the Politics of Change”

*With Amanda Reaume, Antigone Magazine Founder and Editor

Presented by BCCIC’s Across Generations MDGWorkshop Series*

Date: Monday, June 25th

Time: 6:30pm – 9:30pm

Location: 2150 Maple Street (SPEC building, between6th – Maple in Kits)

Cost: FREE! /Light refreshments and snacks will beserved./

Everyone is welcome to participate in the workshop.Space is limited please RSVP with Carly Teng at cteng@bccic.ca and or call 604-899-4475.

Visit http://www.bccic.ca for more information.

Here’s a description of my workshop:

First zines and now blogs have become cornerstones of progressive social movements. The backbone of their appeal is the inherent democracy within their self-production. Almost anyone can create a zine or a blog – and through subversive use of these mediums one can communicate and advance politics and beliefs that are not part of the mainstream.

Indeed many past and present social and cultural movements have zines as part of their history for this very reason. Hippies, beatniks, punks and riot grrls have written and self published zines. The punk and riot grrl movements are particularly invested in self publishing because of their do it yourself (DIY) ethic. But even as ‘zines continue to flourish as alternative and subversive publications in online and offling forms, blogs have also created communities that have been coopted to offer alternative ideas.

From her role as the editor and artistic director of Antigone Magazine, a feminist zine and blog about women and politics, Amanda Reaume will speak about her own experience writing a zine and working on a blog. This workshop will discuss the history of ‘zines and blogs and give practical advice on how to go about making your own. In fact, the attendees will work together to actually put together their own zine!