Eternal student

I am home after taking my Seamanship exam.  I'm glad to be done with courses for a while.  I will have a few months off before I go to Sea School in the middle of June with the goal of getting my Captain's license.  I don't think that I will use the license in a professional capacity.  It's one of those bucket list things that I want to do.

I seem to be the eternal student of something.  I keep telling myself that I won't take another course and yet, after a few months, I'm ready to sign up again.  After Sea School, then I think that I will take a photography course or two.  Also, I want to become a vessel examiner.  Whew--lots of interests that seem to keep me studying something.  Maybe I am meant to be a jack of all trades or perhaps a dilettante.

One of the great things about having free time is that I get to explore new avenues of study.  I don't have to juggle so many commitments as when I was working full time.  I'm not sure that I have the drive anymore to put all the newly learned things towards a second career.  In fact, I can tell you that I don't have that drive.  I simply want to be learning these things because they interest me.

Next week, on Monday nights,  instead of going to a lecture, I'll be back at my home group meeting.  I have missed being away from the small group of friends that attend there.  I suppose that I will be an eternal student of Al-Anon as well. I keep going back for lots of reasons, not the least of which is my tendency to resort to old behavior patterns and ways of thinking.  It takes a while to change a lifetime of reacting to circumstances.  I am comfortable with the message, and no matter how hard I try to be perfect, I realize that this is one thing that I can't achieve through study.

“Be a Student of the Game. Like most cliches of sport, this is profound. You can be shaped, or you can be broken. There is not much in between. Try to learn. Be coachable. Try to learn from everybody, especially those who fail. This is hard." ~David Foster Wallace

No one is perfect here

I started beating up on myself last night when I went to my Advanced Piloting course.  I hadn't picked up the plotter in about nine months, and it felt like a foreign object in my hands.  All of a sudden,  I felt panic and fear as I was doing a simple refresher exercise.  What if I can't figure this simplest of problems out?  What if someone sees me struggling?......What if I fail?

The instructor said he could see that some of us needed to get reacquainted with the plotting tool.  And indeed, I wasn't the only one who was trying to remember how to orient it.  I wanted to grab my parallel rules, but we are supposed to be using this more accurate device that isn't at all intuitive to me.  So we were supposed to go home and practice with it, doing the exercise until we could use the tool quickly and proficiently.

So far,  I haven't done any practicing because I spent most of the day taking my mother-in-law for a doctor's appointment and lab work.  Then there were things to do when I got home at nearly 3 PM.  I knew that today was going to be a full day.  I wasn't feeling particularly jovial and found myself feeling exasperated and impatient.  Even though I spent almost five hours with her,  bought her lunch and some fried chicken for their dinner this evening,  and visited for a while after I took her home, I still felt like I was a jerk. 

Beating myself up used to be a regular thing.  And that's why the first person on my amends list was me.  I needed to forgive myself for all the guilt and harsh thoughts that I had about myself.  I know intellectually that no one is perfect.  I realize that nothing earth shattering is going to occur if I have to re-familiarize myself with something I haven't worked with for nine months.  But it's my ego that brings up the voice inside my head that whispers, "You're not good enough."  Those old messages are the ones that sneak back to break me down and send me into despair.

So I am writing this down here, "I am not perfect and can forgive myself for my humanness." It is a reminder that I will make mistakes, look foolish, fumble, and struggle.  But I don't have to feel bad.  I can forgive myself and let it go.  And in making mistakes and admitting them,  I align myself more with others.  By being kind to myself,  I can then be kinder to others.

Now I'm going to see if I can plot a course with the plotting tool!

Ideals are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them with your hands.  But like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you will reach your destiny.  ~Carl Schurz,  1859


Some of us, observing that ideals are rarely achieved, proceed to the error of considering them worthless. Such an error is greatly harmful. True North cannot be reached either, since it is an abstraction, but it is of enormous importance, as all the world's travelers can attest ~Steve Allen