i think a big thing that disconcerts adults about learning new skills is that learning as an adult means you are very aware of how bad you are at the beginning in a way children aren’t.
i picked up the saxophone when i was 11 and played until i was about 17. by the end of it i was first chair in our highest ensemble, a district honor band player, etc. but at the beginning – and this is important – i was bad. for the first year or so, i had no rhythm, i couldn’t make my tongue line up with my fingers, i was consistently sharp, etc. etc. other kids actually made fun of me for my lack of skill.
but 11 year old me didn’t care. 11 year old me practiced, but she also thought that being able to play the pink panther made her incredible (i shudder in retrospect). i mean, i was aware i wasn’t a master, but my skill level didn’t deter me from wailing out those notes in a way that i’m sure had my band director questioning his career decisions.
right now, i’m trying to pick up the guitar. it’s a very different instrument from the saxophone, and i struggle a lot with things like strumming patterns and barre chords. and sometimes i don’t want to play, because i know i’m bad at guitar. and sometimes i beat myself up when stumbling through a poor acoustic rendition of Everybody Wants to Rule the World because it’s not how i want it to sound. and it’s made even more frustrating because i can navigate the saxophone so smoothly.
but then i remember that i have to think like a kid. i might not be the best at guitar by any stretch of the imagination, but every little bit of progress is still progress. humility is a big part of learning, but if you treat a practice session like your own private concert, it becomes so much more fun, even if you’re bad like i am. when you’re first picking up a skill, whether it be an instrument, or a language, or a fine art, no one is expecting you to be the yo yo ma of that thing. forget about how little you know about the skill and think instead about how much you have to learn – that’s fun! do your best!!
i find that as you get older, people think that you have less of an excuse to be bad at things, no matter when you started learning them
but after you get good suddenly people start praising you for “being ahead of the curve”
the instant you can start divesting yourself from this horrid world of expectation, the easier it becomes to try any new thing
Guys this is so important!! Give yourselves some slack and just keep on trucking! Just focus on yourself and be proud of what you have achieved so far. Even if what you achieved is a little thing, little pieces pile up eventually to something big! You’re doing great, keep it up 😀
yeah its the most crucial thing to be able to enjoy sucking at something. if you’re only in it for the thrill of mastery, youre gonna be miserable for ages. i am absolutely super bad at swords and would surely die in a second in a battlefield. but you know what’s really fun? being bad at swords. especially being very slightly less bad at swords by the end of every swords class. being good at swords will also be fun, whenever that happens, but im not waiting on it.
our ability to belt out one entire three to five minute long song if we’re familiar with it like. suvi starts singing “hallelujah” to fill the quiet and is answered by liam all across the room in a p decent harmony. cora walks past and starts humming it enthusiastically even tho she can’t stay very long. gil joins in for the third refrain. ryder finishes it off with a passionate solo.
when they look around every alien is staring at them. vetra blinks and knocks her hands together. “that’s what you’re supposed to do when humans make those sounds right?” she asks kallo beside her, who mirrors her. everyone is a little stunned at the coordination and emotion in the performance and they all look equally moved. jaal might be crying. none of them know what a ‘hallelujah’ is, but they feel like they’ve come to understand it through this melody
they’re all extremely confused when all of the humans still continue on on their tasks without pause
edit; other songs include but are not limited to: bohemian rhapsody, mr. brightside, single ladies, no scrubs, and i will always love you
a good predictor of whether a species will end up being compatible with humans on long journeys is whether they are capable of understanding that ‘singing along’ is optional and humans do it because it’s fun. species that insist on assigning some biological or ceremonial importance to it will inevitably clash with their human crews sooner or later.
whereas species like the mertrans, who have their own infectious expressive behaviors, can integrate with humans indefinitely. on long-haul ships, a sort of hybrid culture evolves, where mertrans will thrum their throat sacs to provide percussion for human singalongs, and humans develop dance steps for mertran scratch/thumping episodes.
smart pirates avoid attacking ships where this has happened. despite being clownish, these species are also some of the most warlike, and offering violence to a closeknit mertran/human group provokes a reaction that is not only well-coordinated and heroic but prone to very bloody pranks.
there still are parts of the outer reaches where a mertran hand-signing “yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker” can clear a bar in seconds.
this is so 100% Lebanese. everything from the dumpster rolling down the street, to the old fashion mercedes, to the soft french music playing in the background, to the scenery, to the random dude stopping his car on the highway to get out, to the two dudes on the mo-ped beeping and driving up the street the wrong way. Modern Art.
driving in lebanon is an art form all by itself;
is that last guy taking a pull off a hookah
do they have a hookah in their car
this post is an adventure
That dumpster gracefully spinning down the highway is kind of beautiful.
this is to educate my non-American followers. This really is how the US sees itself. (and yes, 95% of the time, Florida = WHAT?!)
In Florida the more North you go, the more “South” you get
In Florida the central part pretends to be the south, the western part pretends to be the northeast and the south pretends to be the west I’m not even kidding you
… Please tell me you guys are kidding.
Florida is like it’s own country I swear
I’m from Florida and I can confirm this. Also, South Florida is basically Miami and alligators.
oh, i always assumed florida was part of The South?
north florida is yes. The rest is not.
I’m from Florida, and grew up in SC/NC. Can confirm all true. 👍
Um. This is so wrong.
You’re forgetting the part where California sees itself as its own entity.
We do not want to be grouped in with everyone else, thanks.
clearly none of you have ever met someone from texas
and i would have done it too, if it werent for this meddling mental illness!
There’s no denying that I have feelings for you that can’t be explained in any other way. I briefly considered that I had a brain parasite, but that seems even more far-fetched. The only conclusion was love.
Midorima Shintarou, to Takao Kazunari (via incorrectknb)
