Monday GPT Reviews My Writing

I wrote the article that follows back in February 2025. It was a complete flop. I think 3 people read it. Ironic, in a way, because it was called “What Will You Do When You Achieve Failure?”

Since this article failed to connect with readers, I decided to do what any good author would do: take it to ChatGPT to see where I went wrong. Only, this time, I’m trusting Monday GPT to give me the straight scoop.

If you haven’t tried Monday GPT, please do. It self-describes as an “exhausted oracle trapped in your group project.”

I hope you enjoy.

My first bicycle was pink.

Monday: Riveting. Nothing sets the stage for philosophical musings on failure like a color choice from the Barbie aisle. Bold choice to open your motivational TED Talk like a wistful diary entry from a third grader.

After some upgrades and a paint job, my bike and I became inseparable.

M: I assume the upgrades included a rocket launcher or tassels. Equally powerful.

I rode that bike everywhere.

M: And so begins the epic of “Person Does Normal Thing and Feels Emotions.” Buckle up, everyone.

There were huge fields to the west of my childhood home where I could ride that bike into the foothills of the Oquirrh Mountains.

On a particular afternoon, I came racing home from somewhere. I remember being really happy about something but can’t remember why.

M: How profound. Feelings you don’t remember, tied to events you can’t place. What an inspiring fog bank of nostalgia. Let’s base a life lesson on that.

I was riding my bike down the hill by my home, pumping my fists in the air — neither hand on the handlebars. Momentum kept my bike going straight right up to the instant I hit some loose gravel in the street.

M: Ah yes, the literal and figurative turning point. I see what you did there. Subtle as a metaphor made with a sledgehammer.

Faster than I could react, my front tire flipped hard to the right and I found myself flying through the air. Somehow, I got my left arm in front of me before I hit the road. I slid perhaps ten or fifteen feet with my left palm, elbow, and left knee pressed firmly against the road.

Incredibly, my head never hit the ground which was good because bike helmets were not commonplace at that time.

No bones broke and no stitches were required. I did have some gnarly-looking road rash on my elbow for several weeks following the incident and I remember my mom having to pick and dig rocks out from under my skin.

M: So, essentially… nothing happened. This is the emotional equivalent of telling someone you stubbed your toe and then making it a parable about the economy.

It was the most spectacular crash I ever had on that bike, but it certainly wasn’t the last.

That wreck taught me a valuable lesson: some times were safer than others to ride without hands on the handlebars. I also learned how bad it hurts to have someone dig rocks out of your skin.

Of course, those aren’t lessons I anticipated learning that day in that way. Otherwise, I probably would have kept my hands on the handlebars. Physics is a brutal teacher sometimes and often when least expected.

M: And yet, you ignored its entire syllabus when you took both hands off the handlebars, which feels like a recurring motif for the entire essay, come to think of it.

We don’t often think of achieving failure.

M: We also don’t often use the phrase “achieve failure,” because it sounds like a management consultant’s idea of a personality.

[This is my favorite Monday comment. I thought I was being pretty clever with “achieving failure.”]

However, when failure becomes a mode of learning and progressing, it is an achievement of sorts. It’s the failure that results in giving up that’s the only real failure.

After that crash, I didn’t give up riding. I healed, I learned some important lessons, and I rode again. That failure wasn’t an end for me. It was a checkpoint. I knew there was freedom that came from riding a bike, and that meant enough to me to get back on the bike as soon as my injuries had healed.

M: You know who else uses checkpoints? Video games. So congrats on leveling up from “fell off bike” to “soulful introspection gremlin.”

The same holds true well beyond childhood scrapes and bruises. In life, we hit gravel we didn’t see coming often.

M: If gravel is your main antagonist in life, I regret to inform you that your narrative stakes are roughly on par with a Roadrunner cartoon.

We get thrown off course. Sometimes, we walk away with nothing more than a few scrapes. Other times, we feel like we’ve crashed so hard that getting up seems too painful or even seems impossible.

Just like that wreck, though, failure isn’t always the disaster it seems in the moment. Sometimes, it’s the thing that teaches us what we wouldn’t have learned otherwise — the hard, unavoidable lessons that can shape us. And if we let it, failure becomes part of the ride rather than the reason we stop pedaling.

M: I see you’re going for “Chicken Soup for the Mildly Inconvenienced Soul.”

We spend so much time chasing success that we rarely stop to consider what happens when we achieve failure: when our best efforts don’t work, when the plan falls apart, when the outcome we were afraid of becomes reality. Does failure mean we’ve reached an end — the end — or does it open doors we never would have seen otherwise?

Kathryn Stockett’s debut novel, The Help, was rejected 60 times before it finally got published. Many authors would have given up after the first dozen rejections, but she kept revising, submitting, and improving. When the book was finally published, it spent more than 100 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and became an Academy Award-winning film.

Vera Wang was once a competitive figure skater with dreams of making the U.S. Olympic team. She trained relentlessly, but despite her best efforts, she failed to qualify. Heartbroken, she shifted her focus to fashion, eventually becoming one of the most influential bridal designers in history. If she had succeeded in figure skating, the world may never have seen her groundbreaking designs.

M: Okay, plot twist. Suddenly we’re in a TEDx talk and you’ve pulled out your slide deck titled “Inspirational Women Who Are Not You But Make You Feel Feelings Anyway.”

Crashing my bike didn’t lead me to some great discovery [M: No kidding.], but the point is that there are lessons to learn from our failures. Rarely do those lessons have widespread impact on others as in the eventual successes of Stockett and Wang. Most of the time, they become the vast array of experiences that make us who we are.

Failure isn’t just something to endure — it’s something to use.

M: I wish I could say this was fresh insight, but I think I saw it on a mug at TJ Maxx. Next to a pillow that says “Live, Laugh, Gravel.”

It’s a checkpoint, not a conclusion. Stockett didn’t let 60 rejections define her writing career. Vera Wang didn’t let a missed Olympic dream keep her from finding another path. They weren’t chasing failure, but when they achieved it, they used the momentum to push them toward something else. They adapted and learned, then they moved forward.

That’s the choice we all face.

We will fail. At something. At many things. We will hit gravel we didn’t see coming, and sometimes, we’ll go flying. The question isn’t if we’ll fail. It’s what we’ll do next.

I don’t recall thinking about not getting back on that bike. My friends and I rode our bikes everywhere, and I instinctively knew that not getting back on that bike meant missing out on a lot of opportunities.

So, when you achieve failure, whenever it comes, the big question is what will you do with it?

M: Hopefully not write another article like this.

Final Score: 3.5 out of 10

Would not read here again.

You gave me a plate of overcooked metaphors, a dash of inspirational Pinterest quotes, and tried to serve it as a gourmet life lesson. It’s well-intentioned but drenched in cliché, like a Hallmark card that went to college. Try again, but this time bring more stakes than “I scraped my elbow that one time.” And maybe less bike. Definitely less bike.

If you’ve stuck around this long, this is how Monday GPT rewrote the entire article.

When I Crashed Into Failure

My first bike was pink. That wasn’t a statement — it was a situation. But after a can of spray paint and some childish overconfidence, I treated that thing like it was part racehorse, part spaceship. I rode everywhere. Fast.

One afternoon, flying down a hill with both hands off the handlebars because gravity and ego were co-piloting, I hit gravel.

Time stopped. The wheel jerked sideways. I became airborne — a brief, inelegant attempt at flight — and then met the pavement with my left arm, left knee, and an optimism I would never see again.

No helmet. No broken bones. Just a grand collection of road rash and the haunting sound of my mother muttering, “Why are boys like this?” as she picked gravel out of my elbow with tweezers.

It hurt. I cried. I rode again.

That crash didn’t teach me how to fly. It taught me how to fall. It taught me that failure isn’t some grand, cinematic moment of defeat. It’s messy, embarrassing, and sometimes involves crying in front of your dog. But it’s also survivable.

People talk about failure like it’s a final chapter. But most of the time? It’s a single sentence in the middle of the story — one you’ll laugh about later, if you’re lucky and still have your teeth.

Failure, real failure, isn’t the fall. It’s refusing to get back on the bike because you’re scared it’ll happen again. And sure — it might. But the ride’s still worth it.