Power of Suck

   Sometime last summer,  my toddler got a hold of a scissors, I got it away from her, but I didn't notice that she had already snipped her dress.   Not a huge deal, it was something I picked up second hand, but there was more room to grow.  So I decided, ok, fine, I'll  try my hand at mending it.

    I grew up in a household where my mom was a craft supply collector. I learned the basics of multiple crafts. Or at least the motions. I was never good at following patterns. It was way too much prep time. So I could sew, technically. Just never had a lot of practice.  Which means mending was not something we generally did.  Sure we had a pile of clothes that were Oh these could be fixed, put them in a pile in the sewing room.  They wouldn't really get touched.  That was more a matter of urgency I would say.  If my school uniform's hem needed to be let out, that got done pretty quickly. On the other hand, there's still fabric sitting in her sewing room for 2 sets of curtains for me.  Both for rooms I'm obviously not using anymore. 

    Going about mending a clean opening in a dress was a bit of a blank space for me. It wasn't frayed, but wasn't a seam. I figured the only way to find out was to try something and go for it.  I found an embroidery hoop and started go.  

    Some areas had more even and straighter stiches than others, and the color of thread matched well enough with the rest of the dress.  Sure it somehow made that part of the dress stiffer than the rest.  On the other hand, my daughter was able to wear it for the rest of the summer, and the hand stitches didn't end up coming out in the wash.  End of summer the dress got put away for the maybe one day she'll have a sister. 

It wasn't pretty, but it was a start and it got the job done.  This little task also reminded me, if I don't start out small and serviceable, I'm not going to get to anything bigger. And if not bigger, my serviceable won't get better without starting somewhere. 

I wasn't always good at . . .

    Years ago I volunteered through work to be a reading tutor for a 4th grade student.  The student I was paired with and I didn't hit it off well, we didn't share many interests.  I'm not a sports person, and that seemed like the primary thing he liked.  I tried to use this where I could.  One thing I could tell that we were alike on was both of us wanted to excel at a new skill early on and just be GOOD. Otherwise it was hard to put in the effort.  I doubt this student would put it this way, especially at the time.  

    I remember that one of the tasks we were doing was helping them with their typing skills. Encouraging them through computer program typing exercises. He just wasn't having it.  I'm not sure if it just wasn't gamified right for him, or he was just getting discouraged at his own mistakes.  He had it, just not consistently, and he was getting bored with it. He was telling me he just wasn't good at it and wanted to go and play some google game with a dinosaur. 

    So I tried this -  

    Me: It just takes practice,  Are you good at throwing a Football? I'm not.

    kid: Yeah I am.

    Me:  Were you always good at throwing a football?

    kid: Yep.

    Well that didn't work the way I was hoping,  I was hoping to engage him in, No you weren't but you kept at it and got better. So lets practice this and you'll get better!  

    The experience didn't turn out the way I wanted, but it got me thinking, how did I get decent at typing?  It wasn't because of the typing classes I had, although I'm sure they helped with the mechanics.  This was the most intense typing instruction I'd had to that date - a freshman high school class where the teacher would call out letters and numbers and we would type them into our word processors. I'm sure she started teaching this style of class on typewriters. She had the cadence down, you could hear the synchronized clack of the keyboard after each letter. A -clack - A - clack - Z - clack - Z - clack and so on.  It wasn't so much This class.  It was that not so long afterward, I started spending more time in the computer lab after school where I had access to the internet, that I didn't have at home yet.  I started chatting online with friends through a messenger service.  

    Once we got the internet at home, this became the major way I communicated.  My elder sister had a second telephone line so she didn't dominate the house phone,  I had broadband internet and multiple chat windows.  I would come home after school, get online and start chatting with my friends.  My typing skills exploded, not so much because of the class, but because it ended up being something I did often and with purpose.  I wasn't always good at typing. I'm still not the world's fastest typist. I can however type quick enough to express my thoughts in nearly real time, then maybe go back and correct a word here or there before hitting send. I got good at it through being bad at it for a while. I didn't get good at it over night, but I need to see purpose in it to continue to work at it, and overcome being 'bad' at it. 

    I'm not sure that 10 year old saw much purpose in typing on an arcane keyboard when he's had access to touch screen tablets, and was way more interested in using a videogame controller.  The 4th grader and I never really gelled. I did, however, find out something we could work on and do that got him interested in words and wordplay.  I found out later that he liked Riddles.  So we concentrated some of our reading on those and trying to figure that out.  I don't know how much impact I may have had, but I hope some sort of joy in riddles may have continued for him. 

It's all A Process

     Many years ago I started another blog, because hey, it'd be neat, why not?  The premise there was that becoming more eco-friendly was well,  a process. That there were many shades of being green. The trick was hopefully to make informed decisions, and work toward being better. That it wasn't all or nothing.

    That pretty much ended up being a writing exercise that in the end, helped me prep for my G-MAT, and stopped after I entered into grad school, and broke my hand during some household maintenance. I ended up not having the time between working full time, going to school part time, and typing one handed. Go figure? right?

    Recently I'd been thinking about it again. Not just in terms of being better about being green. The realization that many things are a process. I've had several experiences over the past few years that exemplify you aren't going to get good at something without allowing yourself to be bad at it for a time.  These have crossed more than one area -  in my career,  in hobbies, volunteering, and in everyday life.

    I started trying to embrace it more a little over a year ago. I needed to adapt something for work, and I kept seeing a snippet come up. That story about the college pottery class where they broke the class into 2 groups. Group A was to be graded on the perfect pot, Group B on how many they could make.  At the end of the class students in Group A had made very few pots and they weren't much to look at, but they had spent hours agonizing over how to make the perfect pot.  Group B's most recent pots were amazing looking, because they got their hands in and just started making pots. 

    Most of my life I've been in Group A. Not quite a perfectionist, but not comfortable with not being good at something either.