Does anyone else get desires to do things you're not very good at?

I have written 20 short humor stories. The premise of each story could result in some real knee slapping laughter. But putting my 200 word draft into a 10,000 story has proven to be extremely difficult.

A few years ago I signed up for guitar lessons at a local community college. Half way through the second class, the instructor took me and another student to the admissions office and we received a refund of the class fee. He explained that there as some folks that will never be able to play a guitar and we were 2 of them. Guess he didn’t like my heavy metal version of Mary Had A Little Lamb.

Ooh yes, I would very much like to be a decent chess player. But there are too many choices and how can you ever tell which one is the best and if you can’t choose the best then you lose and the other player laughs at you (even if it’s a computer) and there’s only so many five minute losing matches a person can take before they say to hell with it and go gardening. Because in a garden, your mistakes are better known as compost.

And you should see the very first bowl I ever made in ceramics. It’s like blind, three fingered trolls on crack made it and then dropped it off a cliff. Five bazillion bowls, vases, sculptures, and such later, I’m not half bad.

Every now and then, I wish I were a dancer. A trained, modern, interpretive dancer. Or a figure skater. I’ll hear a piece of music, and will think “wow, this would be awesome to dance/skate to!” But, while I have pretty decent rhythm for a white chick, a “real” dancer or skater I will never be: I’m not really interested in doing it, it’s just a thought that strikes me sometimes when I hear certain songs. (I’m a musician, so I think it might be tied to a general sense of wanting to interpret or make or be a part of music.)

More mundane things include playing softball and shooting pool. I love doing both, and am equally as bad at them (actually, I’m slightly better at shooting pool, but still pretty dismal). :smiley:

Um, well, from Brooklyn, take a Manhattan-bound N, R, or Q to 57th St / 7th Ave and it’s like right there. If you’re coming from Queens, it’s a Manhattan-bound N, R, or W to the same stop. From the Bronx, take a Manhattan-bound 4, 5, or 6 to Lexington / 59th St and transfer to a downtown N, R, or W as above, or the B, D, 1, or 2 to 42nd St / Times Sq and transfer to a Queens-bound N, R, Q, or W, again as above. Once you get to 57th St / 7th Ave, exit the station via the 57th St exit and walk downtown about one block. It’s right at the corner of W 56th St and 7th Ave, on your left. This is a 24-hour station, and all trains stop here, so don’t worry if you’re doing this during late-night or weekend service.

But I don’t see how that has any bearing on the OP. :confused:
:wink:

“If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.”

-G. K. Chesterton

YES!

Podkayne’s nailed it exactly. That’s exactly how it’s been for me on a number of things, particularly pottery. I was the worst in my pottery class–really, really bad, for a whole semester. Everyone was making these nifty bowls and vases on the potter’s wheel while I was making vaguely cylindrical lopsided things. I sucked so mind-numbingly bad. But I really wanted to do it and didn’t really mind that I sucked that bad (well, I minded, but not enough to give up) so I just kept at it. I gradually got better and better, and while I won’t ever be really good at it (compared to really good potters I know) I am sometimes told how “talented” I am.

I can think of many people I know who didn’t really display a great, amazing aptitude for something at first, but since they really liked doing it, they kept at it. Eventually they got pretty good, only to be told that they were good at it because of their “talent.” Uh, no. It was their perseverence, not “talent” that made them good.

I do recall some things that I started to learn, only to find that I sucked so bad and didn’t have the inclination to work hard at–one was silkscreening. I had no problem coming up with a picture to silkscreen–the drawing, the color choices, etc. But getting it to all come together into an attractive print? Absolutely SUCKED. It was always off-kilter, always wrong somehow. It seemed so seamless and simple when my classmates did it, but I just didn’t have the knack for it.

I loooooooove to sing, but I’m not very good at it. I won’t make your ears bleed, but it’s nothing like how I’d want to sing (think: Sarah Brightman). Still, I try.

It doesn’t help that if I know someone is listening the most that comes out of my mouth could well be described as the same sound a sick frog would make.

Ummm…sex? I guess that’s due to lack of practise.

Sing. Play guitar well. Oh, yes.

I finally realised that although I love music with all my heart and soul (and an embarrassingly large record and CD collection proves it) I am simply not… good enough.

I have no rhythm and my voice is unexceptional.

I can write a fairly decent folk-rock song, I really can, but I can’t make what I hear other people do come from me. I want to move people, to achieve a series of perfect, sterling moments. I get caught up in music and soar. But other people don’t hear what I hear. (Damn, oh, damn, the truth the tape recorder tells.)

But art shouldn’t be just for the artists, and if it makes me happy, when I’m all alone and feeling good, then I love to play and sing. And dream and pretend.

Yeah, I get those desires a lot. So I get some cheap beginner’s materials and do those things. The way I look at it, even if the results are laughably bad, or even eye-bleedingly hideous, the fun I had piddling around with it was well worth the small amount of money invested. Sometimes the results are pretty damned pitiful, even though the people around me are far too kind to say so. When that happens, I just laugh. Laughing at myself and my handiwork beats the hell out of getting depressed and giving up on something I had fun doing, I guaran-goddam-tee you that.

Hey, if you never try anything new, two things happen. You never find the things you’re good at, and you get old really damn fast. Me, I’d rather laugh at my sad little flower arrangement, rip it apart, and try it again.

I hate doing most things that I don’t do well right off the bat. It’s one of the reasons I’m in translating.

Actually, I’m startled I’ve stayed with acrylic painting long enough to muddle out some of the basics on my own.

I read the math threads on this board even though I can barely understand anything beyond basic algebra.

I’m with the “practice” crowd.

When I’m playing music (which I’m reasonably good at) very often someone will come up to me and say how they would love to play an instrument but just haven’t got the talent. When I ask them did they ever try it they either haven’t or gave up after a month. Listen, I was crap and frustrated for years and years before I could play even passably well.

Having said that and risking sounding like a complete hippy, there’s also the matter of whose expectations you are trying to live up to. Maybe the dollhouse was kind of wobbly but you picked very original and funky colours for it and that’s where your talent really lies but “conventional dollhouse aesthetics” (yeah, :dubious: , I know) value sturdiness. You might be the Van Gogh of dollhousery but no one understands how good it is because they narrowmindedly only look for sturdiness. :wink:

Finally, I have a few things I do just for fun without trying very hard and let myself be bad at if that’s what happens. Kind of refreshing.

Just about any crafty thing out there I have tried: sewing, knitting, crochet, a variety of other things that Joann’s and Michael’s lures me into trying. The bastids.

I felt so un-girly and like I didn’t fit in. I was a fraud at Joann’s. A total poser.
I considered myself a complete and total farging idiot, fat fingered and no patience. Until this summer.

Then I lost my hearing in one ear, couldn’t get around well for about 2 weeks and the meds were loads.of.fun.

Bored shitless and having the attention span of a puppy on expresso and limited mobility (moving chair to chair or couch to bed) because of vertigo, I somehow was able to tap into my craft gene.

I painted little peg people. my daughter loves them. Made fairies out of pipe cleaners, wood balls (hee) and felt and actually started being able to visualize each step of the process ( something I have never been able to do.) of whatever it was I was thinking about doing.

So, now I have about 10 years worth of craft crapola that has been sitting patiently waiting for my innermuse to figure it out and do something with it. Which is good I have this stuff readily available as I/we have zero dinero to indulge any whims that involve a craft store right now or the next couple of months.
Today, as it is a snowday, I am putting away xmas ornaments and afterwards, work on doll dresses. I suck at them right now, but I have loads of fabric to mess around with because I am no longer afraid of making mistakes.
Making mistakes are how we learn. Flowers need manure, et al.

Use it with my blessing! (Especially if it works!)

I’d love to be able to paint and sing. Not necessarily at the same time…

You’ve nailed it, right there. Crafting (or just about anything else in life, really) is about the Miss Frizzle philosophy: Get in there, make mistakes, and GET MESSY!

I make quilts, cross-stitch, beadwork (both loom and off-loom) and crochet, all with varying degrees of success. But the one thing I want to do, but can’t, is knit. I just can’t. I try. I get frustrated. I quit. I try again. It’s the needle holding/tension thing. It’s very difficult for me. I don’t know why. But every so often I get out my needles and my ball of yarn and try again. I love a challenge. :slight_smile:

The Faerie

Music and Languages.

Not for lack of trying. I played flute, in a somewhat dedicated fashion for about 5 years. I’m so mechanical in my approach, (as well as tone deaf) and so logical about music that it destroys my ability to actually play.

I also have no knack for languages. I took 5+ years of French, and have visited France twice. Don’t get me wrong, I can memorize the hell out of vocabulary lists and grammar rules, but there’s something extra involved in really “getting” a language that I could never achieve.

I could never “speak” in French as others could. I always have do a “clause by clause” translation of everything I want to say in French, usually employing convoluted phrasing that takes advantage of the grammar and vocabulary that I can recall at the moment.

There are people who just seem to “get” the internal logic of another language and/or music. I’m not one of them.

Dancing, by myself. I’m terrible, look like a dork doing it, and would be laughed out of a room. But it’s just so much fun I love doing it.
Take some lessons? Hell no, that would take all the fun out of it.