If you were unaware that today is National Accept the Fact that You Stink at Stuff Day, it’s because I made it up five minutes ago. I intend to celebrate it every year from now on. Maybe several times a year. It’s really a very joyous occasion.
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| Bad Pet Photo # 1 |
NAFYSSD is the day when we all relax, admit our failures, and decide we don’t care. It wasn’t an easy sell for someone like me. I’ve always found being good at something really enjoyable. What’s worse, I’ve always more-or-less expected to be good at stuff. My assumption was, even if I wasn’t good at something to begin with, all I had to do was try hard enough, and I’d get there.
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| Bad Pet Photo # 2 |
The problem is, there are simply some things I don’t do well and never will. Skills that seem to be meant for people from a different time zone or maybe a different dimension. Things that make my brain feel like it’s got a short somewhere. Here, for example, are three things I am truly terrible at. No self-pity here. Just the sheer pleasure of realizing it’s okay.
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| What IS that in front of Winnie’s face? |
Gardening. I spent a lifetime moving around and, when I was in a place for longer than a year, I was usually living in a dorm or a monastery or something. All those years, I dreamed of having a garden. I’d grow a vast array of aromatic herbs! And roses of all variety! And tulips! And decorative lettuces! I would tend my plants like a mother hen with her brood, and my yard would make people stop on their daily walks simply to take in its beauty.
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| Yes, there is a cat in this photo |
Then I bought a house. And I discovered the dirty truth about gardening: It’s dirty. When you garden, you have to work in the soil. You get sweaty. You get bug-bitten. You get sunburned. I hated it. And, yet, I was determined not just to do it, but to do it well. So I labored long, hard, difficult hours planting and mulching and watering and weeding, and ended up with a few pathetic blooms interspersed among a lot of gigantic weeds. Nope, gardening is not my forte. And, thanks to NAFYSSD, that’s all right.
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| Pixie, AKA “Demon Eyes” |
Playing any sport that involves hitting a ball with a pole-like apparatus. Tennis. Softball. Racketball. Squash. There’s something about swinging a stick at a speedily moving sphere that doesn’t work for me. As a girl, I tried desperately to become a good—even halfway decent—softball player. As a teenager, I took tennis lessons four summers in a row. Yet, I never moved beyond hopeless at either sport. The day I cracked my shin with my tennis racket so hard it was purple for a month was the day I decided to turn my racket into a wall hanging.
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| Uh, whoops |
Photography. My friend Janice creates stunning pictures with her camera. My buddy Eleanor posts adorable snapshots of her pets and incorporates them into her blog on beading. But when I’ve tried to take what I hoped would be darling, amusing, and utterly charming pictures of my beautiful cats, the results are . . . well, you can see for yourself.
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| Portrait of a Cat Ear |
So, what are you truly terrible at? Celebrate it here! And Happy NAFYSS Day!
It’s a relief to me to see someone else who’s a lousy gardener. I keep reading about all the people enthused with caring for the planet and growing vegies in their gardens and how wonderful it is, and I just know that when I take care of a plant, it looks pathetically at me, keels over and carks it. So I’m now kind to plants, I don’t garden, I leave it to my husband who has green fingers, creates wonderful gardens and actually ENJOYS getting his hands into the dirt. What a concept!
Yep. Some of us have it. Some of us don’t. We who don’t should start a club.
Woot! I suck at gardening, too. Happily, Chris likes that digging in dirty dirt thing because I truly don’t. Though I do like buying plants and then saying, “Wouldn’t this look good over there?” His inevitable answer: “There’s no sun there.” And yes, I can take great photos of my animals and jewelry, but a landscape? Forget it. I can only photograph things less than two feet away. But what I truly suck at? Typing. Yes. A writer who can’t type. If it werne’t for spell check it would look like I write in code. I think I’ll celebrate that today. Great post!
P.S.
A while back, I invented a day, too. Maneki Neko Day. And so many people said, “Wow! I didn’t know there was a Menki Neko Day!” Hope I remember what day it is for next year. ;0)
What a great idea for idea. Let me know when you remember what day it is so I can be sure and celebrate.
Okay, this is supposed to say “What a great idea for a day . . .”
i had an epi-whatsit at 60 when i realise that i have ambition without talent rather than the reverse. making art is now much more enjoyable and far less angst-y.
Interesting how that happens, isn’t it?