What does failing mean in the context of autoethnography? What does the way I think and feel about evaluation protect and produce? In this piece I revisit places in my own work that have felt like failure in order to try to frame in other doors around that threshold of judgment. Rather than judging judgment and articulating the right way to do things (imagine knowing that!) I wander through bits of psychoanalytic theory and wonder about the generative potential of good-enough work.