When 120 Mistakes Became My Best Teacher
In the world of design and screen printing, there’s an unspoken truth: you will fail. You will ruin shirts. You will lose money. You will doubt yourself so hard that your gut tells you to quit. And weirdly enough? That’s where the magic happens.
I’ve made costly mistakes in this game—errors that hurt not just my wallet but my pride. I remember one time I was on press at someone else’s shop. I accidentally printed the wrong design on the wrong shirt… about 120 times. Midway through a 300-piece order, I caught it. Stomach dropped. Hands froze. My boss at the time was a real hard-ass with a temper. My first thought? “You f*cking idiot. He’s gonna flip. Can I hide this? Can I fix it before he notices?” Nope. I couldn’t.
But what I could do was stop immediately, face the music, and own it. That scar stuck. Not as shame—but as discipline. It taught me to slow down, to look closer, to care more. That moment didn’t end me—it refined me.
Awareness is a Tool. Acceptance is a Skill.
Failing is one thing. Knowing you failed is another. That awareness is powerful. It’s the ability to identify a mistake and say, “This is where I messed up. This is where I can do better.” That’s design (and life) principle #1 in my book: Awareness = Better Decisions. Respond vs react.
And then comes acceptance. But I don’t mean passive acceptance like “oh well, I guess I suck.” I mean receiving the truth with full, honest agreement. Acceptance is the courage to stand in the wreckage and say, “Yeah, this is mine. Now what?”
When you mix awareness with acceptance, you unlock flow. You stop resisting. You get present. You start seeing your circumstances as fluid options instead of rigid failures. That’s when you become the artist who can adapt, problem-solve, and grow—not just technically, but mentally and emotionally.
Design is Reframing.
Reframing is what we do as artists. A blank canvas is a story waiting to be told. A mistake is just a misaligned layer, waiting to be corrected or built upon. And that idea carries into life.
That same print shop mistake? Looking back, I didn’t ruin half the order. I turbo-injected myself into a chance to practice accountability under pressure, confront my own anxiety, and learn how to navigate someone else's anger with tact. Not fun. But necessary.
I’ve reframed so much of my life this way. Take school—I got straight F’s freshman year. They pulled me out and sent me to this “alternative education center” for kids who weren’t making it. Honestly, that school saved me. I wasn’t dumb—I was just surrounded by racism, bad energy, and a shit teachers. But with 3-hour school days and no homework, turns out I was pretty smart for a degenerate.
I graduated in 2007. Then came drugs. Identity crisis. Rock bottom. But March 1, 2014? I got clean. And through recovery, through the work, through the failing forward—I found new ways to think, new ways to live, and new ways to create.
FAIL = Fundamental Aspect of Integral Learning
The failures are not a side-effect of the process. They are the process. Every flubbed print, every bad design, every moment of doubt has value if you decide to learn from it. It's like contrast in a composition—the tension is what defines the form.
So now, when I forget a password or miss a delivery or botch a print, I zoom out. I ask: Does this really matter in the big picture? I’ve seen darker days. I’ve come out the other side. This? This is just a lesson.
And the lesson is this: get uncomfortable. That tingling-in-your-gut feeling? That’s not fear. That’s aliveness. That’s the moment before you try something new. Before you leap. That’s the signal that you’re in the contrast—where all growth happens.
So lean into it. Redefine failure. Redefine yourself. Get lost on purpose. That’s where the real art begins.