I have never been a good swimmer. It’s quite possible I never will be. When I was a kid, my parents kept enrolling me in swimming lessons, and I kept being a terrible swimmer who refused to put my head under water. Part of it was that I’d learned by then that if I got water in my ears, an ear infection wouldn’t be far behind, so every lesson was a silent battle to avoid putting my head underwater. It wasn’t till high school, when several friends decided I would learn to swim (bless you, Ann, Ann, Anne, and Maureen), that I actually got to the point where I could float long enough to survive a (fairly brief) period if I ever fell off a boat. Couple that with an illness that made me extremely self-conscious in a swimsuit for a long time, and you can see why I just don’t get in the water very much.
So here we are in Costa Rica, with a swimming pool right outside our balcony, and a temperature that makes that pool pretty darn inviting. So I got in and splashed around, and finally decided to do a little swimming. And you know what — I liked it. I liked it a lot. And found myself going back repeatedly. Right now I’m going to finsih up this post and then go do it some more.
It took a while to get over the panicked feeling that I was falling forward, that the water wouldn’t hold me up. I kept insisting on starting on the deeper end and swimming towards the shallower, because that way if I put a foot down, I’d be able to hit the bottom. But with every time I made it all the way, it got easier. I started trusting the water (and myself) more.
I’m not claiming I’m going to become a good swimmer anytime soon, or that I’m ever going to like getting water up my nose. But I’m better at it, and certainly more confident about it. And I’ve found something that I like doing, and that I will be trying to incorporate more in my life.
And that — as with so many things in life — applies to writing. Those first attempts to do something new and scary may well be awkward and uncomfortable. In fact, they probably will. Because that’s how we learn. It’s very hard to get good at something without being pretty bad at it at first. And in doing these things, you learn to trust the universe a little more. Which I see as a pretty good thing.
So it’s a Monday morning. Here’s my challenge for you. By Friday, go write or do something that scares you. And come back and tell me what you did.
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It’s always bothered me that fantasy and science fiction get lumped together into a single category. The two genres seem very different, at least on the surface. Fantasy usually features some kind of magic as a core speculative element. It often takes place in a secondary world at a pre-industrial state of technology. Science fiction, in contrast, usually takes us to the future in which some as-yet-nonexistent technology underlies the plot. Granted, there’s a huge overlap between fantasy and science fiction fandoms. Maybe that means we live for escapism, whether to a fantasy world or outer space.
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Cat, my father was a swim coach. He loved coaching swim teams. I wasn’t good enough to be on his team. I swam “like a rock” according to my father. When I was 12 or 13 I got his permission to participate in a swim-a-thon fundraiser. The question wasn’t could I swim, I’d had lessons and even though I was a terrible swimmer I loved swimming. The question, in my case, was could I finish what I started. I had a terrible completion rate as a child.
The swim-a-thon challenge was 200 laps or 2 hours swimming, whichever came first. It was a huge deal for me to get sponsors, practice laps, and then get up early on the day of the event. Dad’s swimmers had morning practice and the. The swim-a-thon began. Those kids cranked out their 200 laps in no time; keep in mind that they’d already been swimming for an hour or so!
I swam for 2 hours, there were periods where I was simply on my back kicking, but I was moving the entire time. The other swimmers, and Dad, paced the pool with me calling out encouragement.
As we were walking home, my father rubbed my head, told me he was proud of me, and walked me home with his arm over my shoulders. It was, and is, one of the most amazing experiences of my life. It stills moves me to tears when I remember it. I manage 133 laps in my 2 hour swim.
So, I take up your challenge in the same way. Thanks! You’ll be hearing from me.
What an awesome story! Thank you for sharing that.
So. Funny story. (I swear it’s funny to me!)
I was thinking about this
post since you wrote it, particularly the “So it’s a Monday morning.
Here’s my challenge for you. By Friday, go write or do something that
scares you. And come back and tell me what you did.”
I’m trying to run a bit (Zombies Run, yay), and I decided to do it in public yesterday, rather than on the treadmill. Which is fairly scary, mostly on a “but other people will see me! and assume I am insecure because I am exercising and not good at it! and spot me needing to slow down!” level. But I did it!
And just as I was finishing up, and heading back home, I jogged past someone out walking a couple of dogs, and the big one bit me. Not badly! It was a bleedings-scrapes-and-Polysporin kind of thing, not a hospital thing. But it was unnerving.
Funny thing is, I do feel better, and more comfortable with the idea of doing it again. In the back of my brain, there is a dialogue playing that runs “But other people will see me! and spot me needing to slow down! and–” “Oh SERIOUSLY? I got bitten by a German Shepherd last time and now it’s about people will LOOK at me? Moving on.”
Moving on. 🙂
Yikes! But awesome that it short-circuited that “people will see me!” loop.
That’s something I’m trying to conquer in the pool right now, because while I’m feeling more comfortable in the water, there’s also a piece of my head insisting that every time I do it, people are standing on their balconies watching the ungainly gringa trying to swim.
I do not recommend pikes (I was going to say piranhas, but really, that overstates the parallel). 🙂
At the same time, I know the feeling. I hope it’s getting better.