After months and months of planning it is finally here! Today marks the official launch of the Awesome Foundation in Austin. To celebrate the launch, mayor Lee Leffingwell has declared February 6, 2012 as “Awesome Day.” How awesome is that?!?! So, what does this all mean for you (if you’re in Austin)? It means that we want to give you $1,000 to do something awesome.

I was so ecstatic when Joel Bush (our awesome founder) asked me to participate. He has been the driving force behind starting Austin’s chapter and is responsible for putting together an incredible group of diverse trustees. I’ve actually only met a couple of them and am excited for the opportunity to get to work with them on forwarding the interest of awesome in Austin and the universe. Austin’s founding members are:

● Hank Blackwell
● Matt Blake
● Sunni Brown
● Burnie Burns
● Joel Bush
● Kenneth Cho
● Jacqueline Hughes
● Shimon Kogan
● Randall Macon
● Vitorio Miliano
● Kerry Miller
● C. Enrique Ortiz
● Rip Rowan
● Rodney White
● Peyton Wimmer

So how does this whole thing work? Each month after reviewing the applications (apply here), we’ll  give $1,000 to a project that we think is extraordinarily awesome. What do we get? Satisfaction. Your idea is completely your own. We want no ownership, and we will attach no strings. We just want to help you make it happen.

Some of my personal favorite projects that other chapters have funded include a giant hammock in Boston, random swings of joy, and one night stands in DC. You can look to these for inspiration and ideas as well as look to the Foundation’s blog. Have an idea on how to make the city a better place? Want to teach foster kids computer programming? We’d love to hear about it. We’re also planning on having a few public gatherings to show off the projects we’ve funded. Watch for updates on our tumblr and follow us on the twitters.

So if you have an idea that you think is is awesome, please apply for a grant here.

Note: If you haven’t met Joel Bush yet you really should. You can find him and a great group of folks Friday morning at Mozarts #regularing.

The Awesome Foundation originally started in Boston in 2009 and has since grown to be a worldwide network of people with over 20 chapters in cities across the world, including San Francisco, New York City, Ottawa, London, Berlin, Sydney, Zurich, among numerous other places. Check out the video below to learn about the roots and awesomeness of the Awesome Foundation.

I remember standing on the starting platform shivering a bit as I wiped the sleep out of my eyes. It was 7:30 am. On the starter’s command I knelt down, placing my hands and feet on the block, waiting anxiously for the horn to blow. I told myself, “this is it”. This time I was just going go for it. The horn blew and I hesitated. Then I jumped off the block and felt the cold slowly engulf my body as I traveled feet first into the water. My toes hit the bottom of the pool and I used them to my advantage, pushing with all my might back up to the surface. I took a breath and saw that everyone was ahead of me. So, I swam faster. I kept my head in the water, racing forward until I felt my hand graze the concrete edge of the pool. Victory was mine! For once.

I never did learn to dive. I was afraid that I might split my head open on the bottom of the pool (silly, I know), so every time I went for it I flopped. Sometimes literally. The seconds wasted by not propelling myself gracefully through the air actually ended up costing me that blue ribbon most of the time. I begged and pleaded for my body to plunge head first into the water, but each time it rejected my cries. This is one of my first memories of failure, and I still remember the feelings it churned up – humiliation, frustration, weakness. With each passing failure I experienced I came to the same conclusion: next time just don’t try so hard. I figured that by limiting the effort I exerted, I could soften the blow if I was unable to succeed.

I wanted to write a post called “I failed at failing.” I envisioned this fantastic piece where I discussed how not applying oneself for an extended period of time leads to mediocrity. I would describe, in excruciating detail, the failures I experienced and how each one prompted a long period where I just quit applying effort to things. And then of course the conclusion where I overcame my fear, and how me and failure were now besties.

If this sounds unpleasant, it’s because it was. Reliving the memories of not succeeding in something I wanted (10-20 years ago!) made me wince, so I’ll spare you all the details. My life didn’t suck. Everyone has had defeats that have affected them in one way or another. I didn’t want to write one of those “Yaaaaaaaaay failure!” blog posts that tells a story about something I tried for, why I flopped, and how it was this incredible learning experience that I wouldn’t have gotten if I hadn’t failed. I know this makes some people want to barf. I get it. So I wanted to write something from a fairly different perspective.

I wasn’t one of those kids that stumbled and got back up again more resilient and determined than before. I didn’t come out the other end stronger. Instead I told myself, “that sucked and I am going to do everything I can to avoid experiencing it again”. Some kids do this by just trying harder and achieving most of the things they go after. These kids normally beat the crap out of themselves when they don’t succeed. (This is all irrelevant if you have never failed. Congratulations! You might just be an alien.) I didn’t approach things quite this way. Why strive for things you may not get when you can wallow in mediocrity? What I couldn’t see then is that not trying is failure by default. Kind of. I mean, you didn’t exactly fail at the task at hand, but you didn’t succeed either, unless you consider achieving mediocrity succeeding. I don’t.

Looking back into my past, I realize I missed out on so much by staying in my comfort zone. I let my stumbles become final results instead of stepping stones to future success. I don’t think anyone necessarily likes failing. In the moment, it sucks. But both success and failure are merely ways to gain experience (which I didn’t gain). Failure is part of an experimental process: if you learned from it, then you accomplished something. Perhaps not the exact task you were trying to achieve, but you still learned. And by learning you became more likely to succeed in the future.

While I do think failure has its benefits, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t suck. It certainly doesn’t bring about warm fuzzies or anything. But, I decided to drink the kool-aid. The delicious cherry kind that says “failing big and often is the key to success!” After years of feeling safe but stagnated, I was thirsty as hell for something different. If that means I’ve got to dive in head first, then I’m going to do it. This doesn’t mean I leap and go after everything (i.e. I no longer think I may someday be a ballerina). Honestly, that’s just unrealistic (i.e.: I am clumsy as all hell). I’m okay with this. And it doesn’t mean that I don’t hesitate out of fear sometimes. What it does mean is that after giving things some proper thought (or not, occasionally), I push forward. I fall and then I pick myself up and do it all over again. You know what else it means? I no longer fail at failing.