Editorial Note: I filed this piece from the app on my phone due to my computer being in for repairs. Let me know if it looks radically off.
You learn many things in a life and one I am still discovering about myself is how at times I have grasped a skill long after other folks.
As I sit typing this, my quintessential piece of equipment – my computer – sits at a home repair shop due to an issue with its screen. This did not make me happy, the wait is driving me crazy and as I noted in my opening sentence the experience is one where I have again discovered part of me. I am a man with faults and flaws you can shake a stick at (where this metaphor comes from, I do not know) and did not really learn how to roll with the tides until later in life.
Some people are born with this skill. I was not one of them and nor were my relatives.
When something would go wrong there were shouts of “I’m getting mad” and animalistic noises which would put fear into the Xenomorph from the Alien movies. Clearly this was not a solid foundation and so at times I found myself doing the same thing or sitting “stunned” – as my father who did not set a good example in this regard would quip – to the frustration of friends, family I would take a bullet for and peers.
But now, I’ve noticed things have changed.
While I still have moments of pounding my fist on the table and shouting I find these are increasingly fewer and further between. I do not know where the shift comes from, whether I can credit my wife for it or if it was inevitable with the passage of time and distance from those I look upon with scorn. It is nice, feels good to know how to shift when the hands of fate go in a way I did not expect and I wonder how much better I would have been had I had this earlier?
Now I’m getting too hypothetical. So, for the moment I will leave anyone who reads this with a question; what did you not do well in life but now find you have the ability to? Let me know below in the comments.
Top Image: My presently vacant desk.
Evan J. Pretzer 