Thank Your Nervous System, then Make EVERY Day ‘International Dare to Suck Day'

APPARENTLY, (as in, 'so I've heard') ANYONE can learn to sing! Tell THAT to my parents, my dogs and my neighbours! 😝🤣 If I DO learn to sing good ... will it be worth it? 🤔 For me? Yes! As for the others ... only they can tell you!😁 Sorry-not-sorry!😘 For the people close to me; the best you can hope for, is for me to get good someday, AND for that day to be SOON! Then, at least you can say;

I remember when she was terrible! But she wanted it SO badly! We felt kinda sorry for her and took to wearing hearing protection ... but, Paige dared to suck! Gotta give her that!

IF, someone ever says that about me it will be: A) a freakin' MIRACLE and B) breaking a pattern!

For much of my life, my go-to move was to stop doing something I wasn't good at, the moment I discovered I wasn't good at it. Since I lived an isolated life in the country, without any experience with ball related sports ... or rackets, or rules of games, or pretty much ANYTHING other than ride ... it meant that I was exceptionally limiting myself.

I further narrowed my life experience, because I would do ANYTHING to not be exposed as less than perfect. I couldn't tolerate failure.

I did ride well; a result of the thousands of hours I spent with the amazing ponies and horses I had. Around the horses, I got it right just often enough to make me think perfection was doable. 🤣Sucker!

What a shmuck! But what did I know? I drank the Kool-aid as a child.

I lived by my coach Jack LeGoff's mantra; "Practice does NOT make perfect! PERFECT practice, makes perfect!" He generally said that a mano-second before launching a military attack on our intelligence and character, in front of a devoted (and often powerful and influential) audience.

As a kid, I looked like an adult by the age of 15 and had been competing against adults on my ponies since the age of 9 or 10. I got into bars at 15 with one of my coaches without getting ID'd, while HE (a thirty two year old) WAS!

One night with my coach after the bars closed, I found myself poised to jump someone’s suburban backyard fence to sneak in their pool with the Olympic medal winning swimmer and wild card, Victor Davis!

The riding world was a fast-moving river of power, youth, booze, and sexuality and I stepped into that river young. Without swimming lessons! This story could go off in another direction here, as it is bound to, someday. But for now, let's just say, WAY too much was expected of me for most of my young life. <