Learning to fail
I am not good at failing. It's not that I don't try new things. I do. Especially things I suspect I'll be good at, which is precisely the problem.
When my physically active Main Squeeze moved to Foreign Country to be with me, we decided to learn a new hobby, meaning something neither of us knew yet. We'd learn it together and have something to share. Back home, my Main Squeeze enjoyed water sports: wakeboarding and jet skiing. He lived close enough to a lake to make weekend trips in the summer. He owned a boat and jet skis and had enough friends that also went to the lake to wake board and jet ski to keep him company. I wasn't involved because I wasn't in his life at that time. However, here in Foreign Country, we had none of those things and after scouting the local equivalent of Craig's List and seeing that buying a boat, no matter how used, would not be economically feasible, my Main Squeeze suggested we try kite surfing.
"Kite surfing?"
I had no idea what that was. He didn't have much of an idea either, so we watched some YouTube videos and decided it looked interesting. We live near lots of beaches. Surely there would be somewhere to learn how to kite surf.
My Main Squeeze found an instructor online and called him. After many failed attempts to contact him, we finally set up a class and we went and were given a training kite. The whole first class was dedicated to trying to fly the training kite. I crashed it several times. You can't imagine how much power a little 2-square-meter training kite can generate until you bring it crashing down on the beach with an intimidating POP. My Main Squeeze had an easier time of it and didn't crash it once. In the end, we had about 5 classes and had gotten as far as body dragging. After that, the instructor stopped calling us for classes. We don't know why. So my Main Squeeze decided to teach himself, which is how he learned to wakeboard and jet ski, and then to teach me.
It's been a few months now. My Main Squeeze gets to the beach nearly every windy day. I can't because of my job, but I try to go once or twice a week. My Main Squeeze is now flying across the water on his board, looking like a real pro. I'm still trying to get on the board. This means I have a basic grasp of kite control - I can usually get the kite to move how I want, with minimal crashing - and I'm trying to actually do the surfing part: getting on the board and moving foward, pulled by the force of the wind in the kite.
So far, I have had about 5 sessions where all I do is try to get on the board. I start by floating in the water, face up, holding the kite, with the board on my feet and my knees pulled in close to my body.
There are 2 ways this can go:
First, you dive the kite to get momentum, then you get pulled up on the board, then your momentum disappears and you bob back down into the water with the kite in control and the board still on your feet. This is the preferred way because since you end at your starting position, you can simply try again.
Second, you dive the kite, get way too much momentum, fly completely over the board while yowling like Tarzan, then either bellyflop or faceplant (belly flopping is much preferred) and inhale buckets of salt water. Optional, you can lose your board, crash your kite, or in a panic, dive the kite to the opposite side and get way too much momentum, fly out of the water while yowling like Tarzan, then either bellyflop or faceplant and inhale buckets of salt water.
Most of my attempts have been of the second variety.
I told my Main Squeeze when we were first considering taking up this new hobby that I wanted to make a committment to learning and that I wanted his support in not chickening out when the going got tough. I wanted to have the experience of learning something that was hard for me, and getting through all of the failure that comes with a committment to learn something hard. He didn't understand what I was asking for at first. But then I started making excuses about why I didn't want to go to the beach. And then he got it. So his highly calibrated support system kicked into high gear and he's been helping me get through failure after failure after failure after failure.
Kite surfing is not easy for me. I am not nearly as physically active as my Main Squeeze and the activities I prefer are more along the lines of Zumba or yoga. I have never done any activity that requires balance, such as skateboarding, surfing, or snow boarding. And I've never trained in any kind of organized sport that requires discipline and dedication. Zumba comes easy for me. Yoga does too (not flexibility, but I 'get' yoga). When I learned to scuba dive with my ex-husband, that came easy for me as well. But kite surfing has not been easy.
I am grateful to my Main Squeeze for his patience and for his persistance in helping me achieve this goal: the goal of learning to fail and contining to try.
Just to end of a happy note: Today, I managed to get and stay on the board for what felt like eternity and which was in reality approximately 2.5 seconds. Today was a good day.
