{"id":749,"date":"2015-02-26T13:47:04","date_gmt":"2015-02-26T21:47:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/?p=749"},"modified":"2015-02-26T13:47:04","modified_gmt":"2015-02-26T21:47:04","slug":"learning-how-to-be-better-at-sucking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/2015\/02\/26\/learning-how-to-be-better-at-sucking\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning How to Be Better at Sucking"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s fun to post about things I’m good at or know a lot about (like trapeze, where I’m working on the double<\/a> – very exciting). I have a much, much harder time when people see me being bad at something. I get embarrassed, upset, and self conscious and just want to hide.<\/p>\n

I’d like to be able to change this, especially now I can see that my daughter takes after me in this regard. I want her to learn as a kid that it’s OK to be bad at something for a while, to stick with it anyway, and enjoy?the fun of it. I was inspired by my friends Brian and Molly, who boldly started beginner piano lessons<\/a> to demonstrate this to their kids.<\/p>\n

\"tap-shoes\"<\/a>So, I signed up for a beginner tap dance class. I’ve always wanted to know how to tap dance, to be one of those people who can just whip out a little shuffle-step when needed. Finding perfect tap shoes at the thrift store followed by finding a class that actually fits my schedule prompted me to finally do it.<\/p>\n

In a class of beginners, I’m the newest and the worst. The teacher is always giving me easier variations on the steps so I can keep up. And forget about operating my hands and feet at the same time – so far that’s impossible. By the end of every class I’m thoroughly demoralized and feel like a failure.<\/p>\n

… which is what I am trying to practice. So I remind myself that it’s OK, it’s part of the point to feel this stuff. Then I try to talk about it in front of Ruby as much as I can. Last week I practiced in front of her too, working on a step until I got it down. In June, I’m facing the horror of an actual dance recital<\/em> where my class performs a tap dance number on a theater stage in front of a large number of people who are only there to see their child perform (in a different song in the same show).<\/p>\n

This is the hardest role model work I’ve done so far.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s fun to post about things I’m good at or know a lot about (like trapeze, where I’m working on the double – very exciting). I have a much, much harder time when people see me being bad at something. I get embarrassed, upset, and self conscious and just want to hide. I’d like to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,11,23,9,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-active","category-body","category-learning","category-life","category-parenting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=749"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":764,"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749\/revisions\/764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}