Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.

Real defeat requires a real attempt, and most people never get close enough to be defeated. Coming up short after years of effort means you were in the actual contest, which is a different category from safe distance and no result. Nothing is grand about the loss itself; the grandeur is in what it took to be eligible for it.

If something you gave a long stretch of your life to has failed, that history is not cancelled by the ending. Give it a name other than waste. Then decide what the next attempt is, knowing you already have proof that you can sustain one.