Laurie Rosenwald - How to Make Mistakes On Purpose: Bring Chaos to Your Order

All the Wrong People Have Self-Esteem, an inappropriate book for young ladies, and frankly, anybody else

And to Name but Just a Few: Red, Yellow, Green, Blue, named one of the years best books by Scholastic Parent and Child

New York Notebook, a hyperillustrated, overdesigned guidebook, sketchbook, and blank book all mushed up together

These August Names, Once Dropped, Shall Not Bounce upon This Earth:

David Sedaris, generous friend, I Pinch Your Claws.

Douglas Coupland, who noticed.

David Bowie, who bought me that cheeseburger upon which I have been dining out since 1979.

For the past thirty-five years, Ive been holding a super fun and popular workshop called How to Make Mistakes on Purpose. Everyone who hears that says, Oh, Im already quite good at that. Ah, if this were only true. Its not. You know what youre doing! Ill bet you are highly skilled. When you get good at something, you repeat it. Its so very satisfying to know it will turn out just right.

Whats wrong with that?

Everything.

Because shared tastes, technologies, and similar experiences equal no surprises.

How to Make Mistakes on Purpose is not what you think it is. Its not that adorable psychopath you once dated, your home pickling phase, or babys first tattoo these may be spectacularly regrettable, but not mistakes on purpose. And its not about accepting or learning from your mistakes so that youll do better next time. The idea is to really make mistakes on purpose.

Mistakes help people create truly original things. Mistakes help you get unstuck when youre stuck.

That is what HTMMOP is for.

It could be an invention that saves lives or a new dessert. It could be a lucrative investment or a road trip. It could help you with your taxes, find an apartment, pick up a check, or pick up a chick. Can I say that? No? Well, I dont care.

When you surprise yourself, you surprise others. And that is priceless in a world where everything seems to have been done.

Dont you want to be more fulfilled, productive, or creative? Dont you want to generate new ideas?

Also, its just plain fun.

When your lifes work is more fun than fun, then you have real success.

For me, what I do for ten hours every day is more enjoyable than playing games, vacations, shopping, food, or sex. I am lucky. I get to draw, paint, write, and create, and sometimes I even get paid for it! Nothing in the world makes me happier. You can take the puppies away. I am my own puppy.

That may be the pivotal take-away here. After all, nobody can sunbathe, eat meringues, and have fantastic sex for eight hours every single day. And if you can, well why are you reading a book?

But this is the point where we need to distinguish the this from the that. Be honest. If you can indeed take a risk without causing harm to yourself or others, and assuming this is our precious, one-and-only brief shot at life, living it as a stimulating, entertaining adventure clearly beats enduring it as an obligation. And if you must be a pathetic wage slave, let it be as a last resort.

I take it as a given that most things we humans do are utterly indefensible. This, I relish and will defend until my last breath. My differentness is my outstanding strength. I treasure my outsider status. I brought myself up. Alone. I have never had to conform. If you want to be your even uniquier genuinier self, Im your girl. Yes, I know those are not words, and I dont give a fig. I am passionate about the potentiality that comes from human imperfection. I have given my life to helping people surprise themselves.

Underneath your tattoos youre still a mainstream prunt.

Yes, I saw thiswell, something similaron a coffee mug. It resonated with me. I do hope this timely argument doesnt offend any misguided millennials, cookie-cutter conformists, or our planets hyperillustrated hordes of inky, illiterate imitators. In that case, mea culpa. Or, in our sadly abbreviated lingua franca, My bad!

There are so many hipster books with the F word in the title. Ive decided to eliminate it from my vocabulary and my work. If it had avoirdupois, Id use it, but it has become about as powerful as the word amazing. Or for that matter, the word the.

In my view, it takes real courage to go against the prevailing grainno matter how gritty, disturbing, and angry the grain. I often wonder at the modern fascination with the morbid, sick, cruel, and violent.

Why we are not all crushed to mincemeat every time we cross the street is a sweet mystery to me. With all the threats, both natural and otherwise, to these fragile packets of vulnerable organisms cased in frail epidermides 0.1 millimeters thin, to keep our flimsy lives intact for more than a moment (let alone a lifespan) is a daily miracle to be ecstatically celebrated.

It might be that the most daringly radical, subversive thing one can be these dark days is cheerful.

What we do in the workshop is top secret. Its all about surprise, so it must be one.

Surprises are rare in our instantly online era.

Okay, okay. Ill tell you. I get a bunch of people together in a big room, and we create chaos. And out of that chaos, new and exciting ideas emerge. Its as simple as that.