As a counter balance to considering what we are good at.
I’m not good at assimilating even the mildest disapproval. I will fully accept responsibility when I am wrong and readily accept and acknowledge. But the mildest rebuke or sense I have displeased. I internalise. I fret. I worry. It seeps into every pore until I shake it off. I now know this has held me back in so many profound ways. A cousin to the fear of rejection and imposter syndrome.
Also pants at DIY.
Oh God. D.I.Y.
Some years back when Frau Steady told her dad she was seeing someone (I.e me.) his first words were “Is he handy?”
No, no, I’m not . I’m really not. I’m terribly sorry to let you down.
Meetings and administration. Loathe it, and if I do it, I deal with it quickly, efficiently, and indifferent to managerial niceties.
I’m also bad at sport and dancing.
Getting to bed on time. Always been hopeless. I just don’t understand volunteering for unconsciousness.
Passive listening. If I haven’t spoken in an hour my brain goes to standby.
I’ve always been terrible at taking instruction. More of a “figure it out by doing” kind of person.
Silence. But I’m working on it.
Despite being a generally tolerant person I am disproportionately intolerant of a few traits – mainly hypocrisy and pomposity. Working on that one too.
Horrible inability to keep a joke to myself, even where better to do so. It’s taking everything in me not to simply write “erectile dysfunction” here.
Writing reviews (on here)
Limiting myself to just one glass of wine
Gardening… I am told by my wife that even though I have the best intentions and that I try my best the keep plants alive gene has passed me by . She tells friends that I can kill anything in our garden. We have also discovered after many years together I’m utterly hopeless at DIY. We are still searching for the things that I’m good at.
It may say something about me that I find it far easier to scroll of a list of things in not good at than contrubute to the partner thread of things I can do. I may be mildly dyspraxic as I’m clumsy, have never, for instance, been able to ride a bike and a total lack of hand- eye coordination makes me useless at sports.
I’m also not good at proof reading my replies when I’ve just woken up and haven’t had my coffee.
Sleeping
Understanding the good intentions of others. I’m lousy at it. I completely get it when someone obviously dislikes me, unfortunately I have a tendency to assume that that is the default position of everybody I meet. I Imagine this springs from a deep seated fear of rejection. I am outwardly very friendly but inwardly I expect the relationship to rapidly sour. This is why I can’t take a compliment. I question it’s veracity. I guess overreacting to the slightest of negatives is another one but I think it’s all a part of that same ball of wax.
I’m an awful cook. I’m a poor poker player and I am a total write-off when it comes to any mathematics beyond the basics. I also and I mean this in the most caring of ways, couldn’t give two fu*ks about The Beatles. I know I’m a bad person. I’m sorry.
Other than The Beatles thing (outrageous!) I can relate to all of that. In fact I’m wondering if you have read my CV.
I’m not very good at not having an opinion or failing to voice it. Or brevity (contd. page 213)
Driving when abroad. I know, go ahead and laugh…to me it just feels like the world has been turned inside out, like being asked to sit an Art exam using only your non-dominant hand.
Drawing.
I am honestly no better at drawing than I was when I was 4 years old and drew “stick men”.
How someone can look at a scene, or a person’s face, and draw or paint an excellent likeness of it, is something that I never cease to marvel at. How do they do it? I just find it unfathomable.
Practice and persistence, I would suggest. It’s just a muscle that gets stronger when you exercise it. Don’t expect to be able to jump straight from stick men to Michelangelo skillz, but as long as you enjoy trying and draw what you see, no matter how you might not like the result, you will improve. And use colour – that adds extra dimensions to your pictures almost without trying.
Pencilsqueezer is of course far more advanced than I am in drawing/art, so may have better guidance, but I am impressed how many AWers can put pencil to paper, not least during Inktober.
I bet with your precise ear for a decent tune, you could create some amazing ECM album covers.
I did this little course during lockdown which was good. Didn’t keep it up though.
I fear it takes more than practice and persistence. Sure, I get you have to flex any muscle but a gift and application must surely be prerequisites also. Application and talent, application of talent. I hope @pencilsqueezer agrees, as he has both in tipper-trucks.
Everyone can draw. Every child draws long before they learn to write. Most people stop drawing as they proceed through life because they believe they have no talent for it. A propensity or desire to use drawing as a way of exploring the exterior and interior world helps and is likely the spark that propels some individuals into wanting to be an artist but everyone can improve drawing skills by application, by practise. Not everyone however much they apply themselves will become highly proficient but that shouldn’t be a brake on trying. It’s fun and rewarding. It teaches one how to analyse, how to ‘see’. As for artists we are just those children who never stopped.
wot ee said.
I am quite passionate about encouraging people to draw, and I do that by showing them how bad I am at it. I have great fun, and I think everyone else can as well.
In our family we have a drawing game, where everyone gets a blank sheet of A4 then has a minute to draw or colour or paint something on it. Then the papers get rotated clockwise and the next person gets a minute. It’s spontaneous, you don’t have long enough to do more than get one idea on paper – either a big sketch or a little detail – and the results (well, let’s say they are not masterpieces – but who knows? Maybe one day they might be).
Hi Twang – looks like an enjoyable course with a sympathetc teacher – did you produce any cartoon characters while you were doing it?
Well I did the ones he did. I did come up with a few fish based cartoons as I particularly enjoyed drawing them.
Maths. I’m reasonably functional on day to day things but even GCSE maths would defeat me. I don’t care really, I can do what I need to do. I’m pretty good at Excel to compensate. I too am terrible at drawing and wish I was better. I’m not good at making myself get on and do things I don’t want to do.
Me too. Struggled with maths at school, never liked it, and have relied on God’s gift to humanity, the calculator, ever since.
As a kid, my elder brother, who is the sort of annoying person who actually enjoys maths and can do complex sums in his head without blinking, would occasionally try to help me with my maths homework. His patience would last about 10 minutes before he stared at me in disbelief, said something like “How can you NOT get this? It’s SO simple…” and stomped off in disgust.
The trouble is, that response is also quite common in Maths teachers. And unfortunately quite a few end up having to teach GCSE retake classes, the worst possible environment for trying to engage and support a young, demotivated learner who would rather be doing anything else with their time. The best GCSE retake class teachers are often ones who have had to overcome their own demons with the subject.
I’ve had a go at improving my maths in the past but there’s a whole language I just don’t understand. Here’s the opening sentence from “Algebra – the very basics”.
“Identities involving exponents are part of the foundation of mathematics.”
Eh?
Oddly enough I was ok at statistics which saved my degree because the formulae are fixed and the results are generally real world related.
It all depends on the teacher.
I studied Maths to A-level and beyond (but didn’t sit the S-level exam) under a brilliant comp. teacher.
I then turned up to university and the lecturer was so atrocious that I stopped going to his lectures as they were just making me doubt what I knew. I’d just sneak in the back at the end and collect the homework assignment.
When I sat the end of year exam, I was the only person to get a first, and many had to do resits. I did actually write to the Vice Chancellor, but got the standard “Dr. W is a leading academic and I have full confidence in him” response.
Thank goodness I only had one year of Maths.
As I mentioned above I am hopeless at sums beyond the basics but I can understand entirely how those who are wired differently to myself find a great beauty in mathematics. As a schoolboy my lack of comprehension in maths undoubtedly impacted on my schooling but I simply could not however hard I tried, no matter how much out of school tutoring my Father paid for grasp it. One of the major feelings of relief when I left school at sixteen and enrolled at art school was an almost delirious joy at realising that the looming horror of double maths lessons was behind me and along with the almost medieval levels of bulling I endured for all of my secondary education years was at long last over for good.
Grammar
Anything involving a ball. Rolling joints. Being with children (they always seem to like me for reasons inexplicable – my attitude to them is more like Sam Neill in Hunt for the Wilderpeople before he went all soppy. Children bore me.). Cooking (I know half a dozen decent recipes for pasta or risotto). Gardening (gardening bores me.)
Isn’t gardening tedious though @Gary …a necessary evil at best. A chore.
Wrapping presents. If I could go back to school and do it as an extra-curricular activity I would jump at the chance. I can never get the corners to look neat and tidy, and if it’s anything other than a cuboid, well, I might as well just chuck it at the recipient and run away sharpish.
Good grief! You’ve reminded me of something that I’m actually good at! My presents have “hospital corners”!
Mine look like they’ve been chucked in a sleeping bag :D!
Top Tip for wrapping irregularly shaped objects: get an empty box that the object fits into (stuff some crumpled up paper into the empty corners to hold it in place, if needed), then wrap the box as neatly as you can – but if the present is any good, nobody cares about neat corners!
(I do…)
Speling
Budgetting
Managed to have plenty of dosh through my working life and partners who looked at the books. Now I am retired budgettting is more needed but I am still totally apathetic about it.
(and see above?)
Apart from inhaling and exhaling, in that order, pretty much everything else.
I’m a collection of wrong things said and done mounted in a ball of panic
More specifically for the sake of the thread;
I can’t use a semi-colon correctly (or even a colon for that matter! Ooh, I say! Matron!)
I’m not funny, despite comedic uses of !
I can’t write. I tried some time ago and was persuaded to add to a novel written by two pals that they self published, but my parts were truly dreadful. I’m cringing now.
I can’t sing and will only do so if in a church for a wedding and have to join in with a hymn. I made myself listen to myself once and was reminded of Peter Boyle as the monster singing ‘Puttin’ On The Ritz’ in ‘Young Frankenstein’.
So, yeah anything creative or musical then. Hurray.
I can’t sing for toffee, either. In school music lessons, I would be tasked with playing the keyboard/bass.
On holiday last year, we drove through Helmsdale.
“Edwyn Collins has a studio up there” I said, pointing up the hill.
Mrs F: “Who”
Me: “You know, the Orange Juice fella. {singing} Rip it up and start again. I’ve never met a girl like you before..”
Mrs F: “Never heard of him.”
10 minutes later she sang, pitch-perfect, the chorus of A Girl Like You.
Mrs F: “Is that the one?”
Me: “Yes, that’s it.”
@beezer : inhaling then exhaling, no wonder you struggle. You have to exhale first, so as to make room.
You see!
And that’s medical science speaking!
I can blow up a balloon but I can’t tie it up. I simply can’t do it.
Even the long thin ones, that make the hollow just behind your earlobe rip?
Especially those ones.
I’m useless at sport – can’t throw or catch.
Yet another AW-er who’s useless at ball games because of poor hand-eye coordination.
Laziness, lack of motivation, procrastination.
Bad with paperwork and bureaucracy.
Not good at socialising.
A criticism of McGoohan’s Number 6 in The Prisoner seems apt. I’m pretty “Unmutual”.