One of the Best Failures of My Life

By Austen Alexander

I enlisted in the Navy at 21. I grew up in Florence, Alabama, the son of a teacher and a mechanic. I’d dropped out of college, and I knew I needed structure more than I needed another semester of figuring it out. From 2013 to 2020, I served in naval security and harbor patrol. I was stationed in Bahrain and later in California, deployed on the USS Carl Vinson, and spent a lot of hours at the helm of a 27-foot harbor-security boat.

But the moment that shaped my life the most wasn’t a deployment. It was a test I failed.

The test that didn’t go my way

Early in my Navy career, I tried out for Navy Diver. I wanted it badly. I trained for it, told people about it, and built a picture in my head of who I was going to be. Then I failed to qualify.

There’s no dressing that up. When you fail in the military, it’s on paper and everybody knows. For a while, I treated that failure like a verdict on me.

It took me some time to see it differently. Today I call it one of the best failures of my life, and I mean that. Not because failing felt good, but because it forced me to answer a question I’d been avoiding: if the plan I picked doesn’t work out, what am I going to do with the energy I was pouring into it?

Building something between watches

My answer was simple and a little ridiculous. I started filming my workouts.

I didn’t have a plan. I just had the gear, the time, and the discipline the Navy had already drilled into me.

That last part matters. Military life doesn’t hand you ideal circumstances. You train in whatever space you’ve got and work on whatever schedule the watch bill allows. I didn’t realize it then, but that was the most valuable skill I took out of uniform. I’d learned to make progress with what I had instead of waiting for things to get easier.

The videos grew. Eventually, I had to make a hard choice. In 2020, I left active duty to do it full time. I remember being told, more or less, “You can’t just make videos.” I understood the concern. But I’d already learned that the path I’d planned isn’t always the path that works.

A friend on deck

Not every lesson from those years came from a workout. When I was driving boats on harbor patrol at Seal Beach, California, a seagull started showing up and keeping me company. I named him Stephen.

It sounds small, and it was. But long patrols can be lonely, and Stephen was a constant. When my time there ended and I moved on, I thought about him more than I expected to. Saying goodbye is something every service member and military family knows too well: PCS moves, deployments, friends you serve with and then scatter from.

Years later, I wrote that story down as a children’s book, Stephen the Seagull: A Friend on Deck. Every part of it really happened. The only thing I made up is that Stephen talks. It’s about honor, courage, and commitment, and about how moving on doesn’t mean forgetting someone you love. I wrote it for military kids, but I think I also wrote it for the version of me who didn’t know how to handle leaving.

What the Battle Bus taught me about people

Today, a lot of my time goes into the Battle Bus, a traveling fitness challenge. We pull into gym parking lots and challenge everyday people, on the spot, with pull-ups and push-ups for cash.

I expected it to be about strength. It turned out to be about attitude.

Here’s what surprised me. We’ve probably had a hundred people hit a personal record on the Battle Bus, and it almost always surprises them. They didn’t suddenly get stronger in a parking lot. Somebody was holding them accountable, and their friends were standing right there watching.

That’s the same lesson the dive test taught me. Fear of failing in public keeps more people stuck than actual failure ever does. Once you’ve failed in front of people and survived it, you lose a lot of that fear. You realize the embarrassment lasts a day, and the regret of never trying lasts a lot longer.

I also see how much people want someone else to be responsible for their fitness: the right program, the right coach, the right time of year. I get it. But the people who change are the ones who decide it’s on them. Nobody in the Navy cared whether I felt motivated to stand watch. I stood it. Fitness works the same way. Motivation is nice when it shows up; discipline is what you use when it doesn’t.

What I’d tell another veteran

I’m not a guru, and I don’t think there’s one formula for transition. But here’s what I’ve learned that might help.

Your first plan failing doesn’t mean you failed. I didn’t become a Navy Diver. If something you counted on didn’t work out, in service or after, give yourself time before you decide what it means.

You already know how to work inside constraints. Most civilians have never had to get something done in a cramped space, on a bad schedule, with whatever gear was available. You have. That’s an advantage. Don’t wait for the perfect setup to start.

Start before you’re ready. My first videos weren’t good. That was fine. What mattered was that I kept filming, kept learning, and kept showing up. Consistency beats talent more often than people want to admit.

Find your Stephen. Find something, or someone, that keeps you steady on the long stretches. Transition can be lonely in a way nobody warns you about. Small, constant things matter more than you think.

Be ready to explain why you’re leaving the path everyone expects. People will tell you that you can’t just do the thing you want to do. Some of them will be right about the risk. Listen, plan, then decide for yourself.

Still showing up

I’m out of uniform now, and I’m the founder of Battle Bunker, but I still live the way the Navy taught me: get up, do the work, take care of the people around you. I still fail at things. The difference is that I don’t treat failure as a verdict anymore. I treat it as information.

If I could talk to the young sailor walking away from that qualification, I’d tell him this: you’re not done. You’re just pointed somewhere new.

Sources

• Navy Veteran Built 5 Businesses After Turning Wild Ideas Into Reality, by Military.com (Military.com), May 20, 2026.
• Media Kit, by Austen Alexander (AustenAlexander.com).
• Stephen the Seagull: A Friend on Deck, by Austen Alexander (Battle Books).
• Battle Bunker, by Battle Bunker (official website).

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Austen Alexander is a U.S. Navy veteran (2013-2020) who served in naval security and harbor patrol. He is the Founder of Battle Bunker, creator of the Battle Bus traveling fitness challenge, and author of the children’s book Stephen the Seagull: A Friend on Deck. He lives in the San Diego area. More here.

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.