Went wakeboarding again, with Joel again, at Bartlett Lake, again.

Got beat up again.

There were some differences - this time, Ethel came along, to decide if she needed to increase my life insurance, and Joel brought along a couple of 20-year-olds to balance out the energies. I did do much better than before - I was able to get up and stay up for a while just about every time.

I'd getup on the board, most riki-tiki, feeling like the captain of my fate and the master of my soul, hearing "Flight of the Valkyries" in my mind:


                                           

Having gotten up on the board, I would ride out onto the water, feeling like a cross between a bull rider and a fighter pilot, hearing Steppenwolf singing "Born To Be Wild" in my mind:

                                              

At this point, I'm fine, I'm groovy - everything is great. Except for one small problem: I can't make the board go where I want it to go. I'm sort of like the NASCAR  of wakeboarding - I can only turn left. I can turn left - and go as far left as the rope will let me go - and stay out there all day long, and - if you didn't know that I wasn't supposed to be out there - you'd think that I had this deal down, dude.

However, this sport is not called "Flatwater Boarding" - it's called WAKEboarding, because you are supposed to be riding back and forth across the wake, letting it toss you into the air and doing all kinds of skateboard moves that have strange names.

So, after a while of hanging around way out there in left field (so to speak) I would realize that everybody in the boat was waiting for me to turn to the right, to come back across the wake into the middle and actually do something. You could tell this - I'd get up on top and be riding, and they would be giving me high signs and cheers from on board, and I would move out to the left, and they would wave and make encouraging noises...and then, after a while, they'd all go back to talking amongst themselves or looking for something to eat or playing solitatire or napping; that's when I knew that I had to try to head back into the wake.

So I would try to turn to the right, and I would get right up to the curl of the wake (if that's what you call it - I mean the place where the water gets all bubbly and churned up) and then the edge of my board would catch the wake, and I would slam into the water:

                 
I would try this fifteen or twenty times, and then Joel would make me get back into the boat so that somebody who could actually WAKEboard could play, and I'd start trying to figure out what I'm going to do next, now that I know that wakeboarding is OMTINGA ("One More Thing I'm Not Good At", although  perhaps that should be OMTAWING ("One More Thing At Which I'm Not Good") because ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.

Now, don't get me wrong - I enjoyed my little foray into wakeboarding, and I'm not TERRIBLE at it (One of the younger guys, Levi, allowed as to how "dude, you had some sick whups out there!" I'm not sure how to parse that - the last time that I had a sick whups, my mother made me mop it up) but I'm not good at it, either. And I don't have time to waste doing things that I enjoy a little bit, or that I might someday get a little bit good at, later - I need to find my Special Purpose.

Those of you who've known me for a while know that I flunked the aptitude test and that I'm a B-Minus At Everything. However, after Sunday's debacle recreation, Ethel and I were talking about that, and I realized that I must not be communicating very well.

I've said for many years that I'd like to find something for which I have a talent; remarks made in response to this statement (and the above elaborations upon it) have left me with the impression that I want to find that talent so that I can "be the best at something".

And nothing could be further from the truth.

What I've always heard is that everybody has a talent for something, and that having a talent means an inate knack for that something - it also implies that they will find enjoyment in that activity, and will be able to increase their enjoyment and abilities along that line.

Now I've figured out that folks think that I want to find my talent so that I can be really good at something - when, actually, I want to find my talent so that, then, I'll have something that I can continue to enjoy and get better at and pursue.

Every activity that I pursue follows the same curve - a quick shot up the learning curve to something like an "average" level of ability, followed by a hard push driven by obsession until I get to that B-minus level, and then I flatten out and quit because I can't get any better, and I know that it's not something that I really enjoy - I'm just trying it to find out if this might be it.

Sort of like "The Hunger Artist", who was only able to go without eating because he'd never found a food that he really liked.

(N.B. - there are some activities that I enjoy, as pastimes, purely because they provide a social setting (playing pool on the back porch, or board games) or keep my hands busy for me while I'm thinking about other things (guitar and banjo, although not banjo so much, as that prevents OTHER people from thinking). And there are some activities that I do because I don't like the way that I feel when I don't do them - running or lifting, for instance - and sailing.)

So, when I do something like wakeboarding - where I realize, right off, that I am BELOW average, there's no reason for me to keep trying it, because That's Not It, and any effort I put into it will only result in frustration later. So I might as well move on to the next thing (although, for the life of me, right now I have no idea what that next thing might be) - actually, we've been talking about making some modifications to the sailboat. Who  knows? Maybe I'll be good at that (no, I don't think so, either, because that's the sort of detail-oriented thing that I'm NOT good at. But might as well try).