"I Do It Because I Suck and I Hate Sucking"

This is what my friend said to me today on the phone about her painting classes. It's one of the 2,000,000 things I love about her.  She's willing to suck at something, in public, to become good.


I feel her pain on this one.  I started putting on weight in 2010 after dealing with a family member's crisis by eating lots of ice cream.  I swear it made sense at the time.  Then last year I had 2 surgeries & the not-working out and eating train really picked up steam.


That was kind of a disaster, so I've started working out regularly again & started taking Krav classes again, which reminded me why I love this stuff so much in the first place.  


But holy crap do I suck.  And when you go to class you suck in public.  


Last night I went to class completely prepared to suck and was not disappointed, but oh my god it was so much fun!


Matt had us out in the dark choking each other against a storage container with an uneven surface, then choking each other on a table so we couldn't use our feet.  We were on our backs on a table of upturned wooden boxes, the attacker standing in our guard & leaning over us choking us.  Our feet couldn't reach the ground so they couldn't be used to generate power for the defense.  Then we had to run a short distance (suck).  

Then the fun began.  We learned a couple of parkour jumps over the boxes we'd just been choked on.  I have a massive mental block about jumping over things. I can climb a fence & jump over it like an 11 year old taking a regular short cut through the neighbor's yard (which I once was), but jumping over a solid object, even one much shorter than a regular fence is like facing a hungry lion after rolling around in cat food.  I soooo did not want to do it.  My heart was pounding in my throat and it was made worse by the fact that I knew my feelings were ridiculous. 


Everybody else was flying over it like professional stuntmen, but I, um, was not.  I wanted to quit, I just didn't want to quit in front of other people. So I kept heaving myself over.  I wish I could have wailed each time just like Chewbaca, it would truly have completed the picture.


Then came this little exhaustion drill, punching endlessly, defending surprise chokes, running & jumping over the boxes & getting surprise attacked again. By my third round I was getting tired, too tired to be scared.  So I just went up to the box & jumped over it like an 11 year old kid. HA!  


The lesson, of course, is that the problem is all in my head.  It's interesting how knowing that doesn't help at all.  

Me and my super-fly friend who won't suck at painting for long.

I'll go through the same process of sucking again over and over until I reach some sort of internal critical mass where I just begin to jump without fear or hesitation.  How many times will it take?  I have no idea.  I also don't care.  What else am I gonna do, sit around and suck at this stuff?