Feeling like an old, old dog

Did I mention I'm taking scuba classes? Wow, is it hard to learn a new physical activity.

I'm not a real fan of learning stuff in general, believe it or not - not if it's hard for me to learn. Bring on the knitting, the jamming, the canning, the baking - those things all make sense (even if I can't yet properly caramelize sugar after all of four or five attempts). It's not that I'm totally out of learning-practice: I have a ridiculously hard job and even after almost five years I run into a wall every single day. You'd think I'd be more graceful about it by now, but most days I have a silent hissy fit ("This is hard, it's stupid, I don't understand, can't someone else do it?!") before I remember that everyone on my team is overworked, and that I'm the boss and therefore should do the hard stuff. (Maybe I need to get over that last bit.)

I do physical stuff too: biking, hiking, camping - admittedly in small doses. There's a lot of silent freaking out on those events, though, and a lot of self-doubt. But at least I have a lot of miles under my belt and know I CAN do it, even if it's hard and I'm not loving it.

Well, scuba is hard. I feel UN-graceful UN-comfortable and UN-adept. I am clumsy and disoriented and a little scared the whole time. When I talk over my lessons with friends I see I am learning and have learned a lot, but nothing about it feels easy or natural or smart. I can never find all the stupid hoses, the dumb buttons don't depress like they ought, the darn vest WILL inflate if I  hit the inflate button, even if I meant to hit the DEflate button.

Is it the hardest thing I've done? I don't know - it's for sure the most complicated, given how much you have to put together pretty much all at once. I've done things that are harder in different ways, sure, but this is very very very not-easy.

I will hang in through my course and hope that when I get to do real diving in real water with real scenery that my pity party will be firmly behind me. As ever, stay tuned!