I Walked Into My Shortcomings is the first book to gather the writings, teachings and interviews of Ken Jacobs (1933–2025), a towering and singular figure in American art and experimental film. Spanning seven decades of creativity, these texts complement a body of work that ranges from downtown capers and reworkings of historical found footage, to groundbreaking performances of expanded cinema and radical explorations of perception and depth. They reveal an artist relentlessly committed to transforming how we engage with the moving image. In his own inimitable words, Jacobs narrates a lifetime of experimentation while offering a gritty and incisive critique of American society and its entanglements with capitalism, representation, race, and ethnicity. At once personal, theoretical, and political, the book captures the urgency and wit of a practice that will continue to reshape how we see and think.