Mistakes

I recently made a mistake. It was a doozy and left me sick to my stomach for days. Even now when I think about it, I get a little queasy. I was accused of lying and I can see why that conclusion was made, but it wasn't the case. It was just a mistake. Of course, I've made mistakes before. I think we all tend to hold ourselves to a higher standard. We are our own worst critics after all, but when you're running a campaign, you're under the microscope.

I know that's what made this mistake particularly painful to me, but not for the reasons you might think. My main concern wasn't that this might reflect poorly on my campaign; it was that I took part in spreading misinformation. Because of the subject matter, and the fact that I now have a larger platform, many people saw this post in which I'd made the mistake and some even shared it.

If you know me, you know spreading misinformation is one of my pet peeves. I think it's easy to become a victim of this with the way that technology has advanced to include so many forms of social media. There are companies whose only business is to spread misinformation, posing as legitimate news outlets. But it is so, so terribly dangerous. When people see things that seem to confirm an already held belief, it's so easy to fall into the trap of believing. When people believe things that aren't true, they can't make truly informed decisions, and sometimes those decisions have dire consequences. I never want to be a part of something like that.

So why am I making a post about it now? Because I'm human and I'm real and I truly want people to know that I'm not perfect. We all have mistakes in our past, things we aren't proud of, times when we even knew what we were doing was wrong, but we did it anyway. It's how we respond to those mistakes that matter. Has the mistake been acknowledged and remedied as much as possible? Learning comes from mistakes and everyone deserves second chances.