She’s fine for about ten minutes. It’s a challenge so she’s game. She props herself up on her hands in the cobra pose, then on the count of whatever internal clock a five-month-old has, throws her arms out and attempts to swim through the air forward, her legs kicking feverishly.
She grunts, struggles and drools but she can’t close the two-foot gap between us.
More attempts. More drool. No progress
What starts as a cry of effort morphs into a whine of frustration. It’s not working. I roll her to her back and she looks up at me. Daddy is upside down, that’s silly. She smiles and the frustration is gone. She’ll get it one day.
I don’t remember my attempts at crawling, first solid food or first steps. But I do wonder about the innate desire to push and grind. Have I ever put more pound-for-pound effort than I did when I learned to country wise email marketing list crawl or walk? At what point did I adopt quitting and was it because I met the end of the innate tenacity to achieve a basic level of function? Or did I develop impatience and insecurity thanks to social awareness?
It’s easy to list abilities or skills I have now that require a lot of air kicking and drool — driving a manual transmission, writing, fly fishing, docking a boat in a crosswind, explaining symbolism to freshmen.
It’s hard to confront the times I quit. I don’t think I’m a went to the woods kicking and drooling quitter and feel that I have had a wealth of experiences, but I do wonder.
Did I give up trying to tie more complex dry fly
and steelhead patterns before I should have? I was often frustrated by my lack of progress in replicating the more ornate patterns and decided to just buy the prettiest ones at fly shops. That’s not a interest huge deal, but I have robbed myself of the satisfaction of being able to tie what I use to do what I love. My circle in that regard is incomplete. It starts with a fly and ends with a steelhead in hand. Had I stuck with it, I’d be good by this point, or at least tying something other than my hideous blended shrimp. I do tie some simple patterns, but my favorite ones, of course, are the pretty ones at the shop.
I wonder about other, bigger, things too. Were there times I justified, “That’s just not for me” as an excuse to not pursue something or was I making logical decisions to funnel more effort into fewer things?