Success

From CaseyPedia

"Predictable Result Every Single Time"

Casey's concept of success makes perfect sense in one of M.C. Escher's famous lithographs, but not in reality

Success is generally defined as achieving or exceeding specified goals and objectives. More often than not, achieving success requires an action plan.

In the alternate universe inhabited by Casey Serin, success is anything that Serin does or imagines himself doing. On the contrary, the concept of failure simply does not exist.

An insight into Serin's interpretation of success may be found in Casey's 2006 summary, posted on IAFF. In this summary he notes the following goals and "successes" which illustrate the extraordinary degree of granularity on the Serin Success Scale™:^[1]

"0% Success" in gaining 10 pounds of muscle. Well-adjusted, realistic humans would more likely refer to this as "100% failure." "0% success" is also claimed regarding his failure to "buy, fix and flip houses then use the profits to buy enough income property to net $3,000/mo passive income"; in fact, given the enormous ensuing debts, it could be argued that Serin in fact met with negative success in this goal.

"Very Marginal Success" describes progress on two goals: "keep track of every dollar" and the abortive 30-day Early Riser challenge.

"12% Success" was claimed regarding his failure to read through the Bible. This very precise measurement of success was calculated from his reading of 138 of 1189 chapters.

"13% Success" for jogging 48 miles of a target 365 miles.

"Marginal Success" in avoiding "alcohol, processed sugar or caffeine".

"Some Success" for wrapping one house in Utah: "So that’s some success in avoiding foreclosure right there."^[2]

"40% Success" for reading 24 of 60 verses of the Topical Memory System.

"52% Success" was asserted for his failure to drink a cup of fresh juice every day, because he claims he drank 190 cups.

"Moderate Success" was reported for the tasks of "start a blog" and "hold to a loosely vegan diet".

"75% Success" has a special meaning in Casey-speak, having to do with the Law of Large Serin Numbers and Probability Theory.

"Success" was used by Serin to describe his Salt Lake City trip."^[3] While he was not able to document a single positive outcome from the trip, in his mind it appears that merely making the trip was a success in itself. Contrast mere "success" from strong success", below:

"Strong Success" is the phrase Serin used while assessing his plan to "quit my programmer job at Pride Industries with no consumer debt to become a full time real estate investor." Perhaps that pesky little debt problem is all that keeps him from claiming "complete, total, unmitigated success." Serin also reported "strong success" in avoiding microwaved food and in taking regular hot and cold showers.

"So Much Success" was used to describe the level he imagined would occur if he paid everything off: "I thought at the beginning it would be such an awesome story, a comeback story and show so much success to be able to pay everything back..."^[4]

"The Successes of the Past" is how Casey described his previous activities when he re-emerged on the new Foreclosurehelpbook blog.^[5]

Complete, Total, Unmitigated Success: Casey has yet to accomplish an activity, including wiping his behind, to which this phrase could accurately be applied. Some would claim this makes Casey a Looser™, and Haterz™ have indeed noted that part of Serin's problem results from the fact that he does not consider failure or any possible negative consequences of his actions or lack thereof. In his view, many of them claim, the only possibilities are current success or future success. As a result, he is inclined to view even the most miserable failure as a "stepping stone to success" and an opportunity to fail forward^[6], when in fact he is just failing.

In his Escherian universe, Serin sees every failure as bringing him closer to success rather than moving him further away.

Perhaps the best recent example of this was in the midst of his Talkathon™, when Haterz™ laughingly observed that as miserably as Casey was getting his proverbial butt handed to him by not just one, but a whole string of knowledgeable, erudite and intelligent callers, he would still be quite likely to go to IAFF subsequently, and post about it being a 'great success'. This is what the morn brought to IAFF: