[social_warfare] “Anything worth doing well is worth doing badly in the beginning” – Marshall Thurber
“Even when it feels award…” – Nancy Cullen
I do not like doing things badly. I want to do things well. The first time. I see others doing a thing well, with grace and ease, so I jump in and, well, you all know the moment: It feels so AWKWARD! Not all how it looked watching from the sidelines.
I remember when I decided to learn to fly. I had always wanted to become a pilot. My father was a private pilot based at a small air park in north central Kansas and I had spent many hours flying with him. He made it seem so easy. It was:
- fun.
- fast.
- exciting
- and sometimes scary!
I wanted to learn to fly.
Years later, I had an opportunity to take a trip with a fellow air traffic colleague in his Bonanza. He was also a flight instructor. On the return leg of the trip, he put me in the left seat and, with his guidance, I flew the plane home. All the way to landing. I was hooked!
Upon exiting the plane, I did a happy dance, high heels and all, on the tarmac. Immediately, I enlisted him as an instructor, found a plane to rent and began the training process. It was fun, until….the dreaded stall recovery training.
The Flying Lesson-Really Awkward
This is the part where the instructor has you fly the airplane in such a way that it STOPS FLYING! Yes, it falls out of the sky. You are supposed to get the aircraft back into flight mode before loosing more than 200 feet of altitude. I know, it sounds insane, but as a pilot, this is important for several reasons. It ensures:
- you are able to recognize the point at which the aircraft is about to stall and avoid it
- should a stall occur, you know how to recover before loosing too much altitude.
- you know how to deal with how AWKWARD this feels!
As we climbed to altitude for this particular flying lesson, my instructor told me how to recover from a stall then led me though the steps to get the airplane into a stall – and it did. WHOMP. All I could see was the ground looking back at me from at 5,000 feet. I did the only logical thing: squealed and grabbed his neck!
AWKWARD. He got the airplane (and me) back under control and returned to the airport. A bad beginning… to something worth doing.
Let’s Define It
So what is this thing called AWKWARD?
- uncomfortable – outside one’s comfort zone
- a place where fear tries to come aboard
- embarrassing – a place where pride and humility collide
- it can be funny if we let it
Ultimately, we laughed about it and proceeded to work through the process again. Was it worth doing? Absolutely. I continue to enjoy flying to this day.
So here I am, feeling awkward about something again: the new platform for this BLOG. As I posted previously, this has been a massive undertaking for me, but I am willing to do it badly, to get it going. Like that flying lesson, I am counting on it being well worth the effort.
Welcome to my awkward – again.
What awkward moment could you recapture, retool and let it become something worth doing? Come on, let us in on it – post in the comments!