Character Weakness #37
By Roz Young, February 16, 2009
I admit that I have flaws. I have lots of character weaknesses, negative things inherent to the very nature of my being who I am. And I wouldn’t magically wish them away even if I could (although five pounds from my ass would be nice). Some of these flaws are so wound up in who I am that most of my friends love me despite these things. If you know me, you understand that I have trouble saying no, that I love peanut butter too much, that I judge pretty girls and assume they are stupid, I embrace secret hate, I despise plan fuckers, I play too much WoW, and I can be a bit pert (as in, an “expert”). Today I spent several hours struggling with a particular flaw of mine, and I’m pretty proud of myself.
Character weakness #37 is that I have trouble doing something in public if I’m terrible at it. It’s so embarrassing for me to look like an idiot. Looking stupid in front of other human beings makes me feel like I am actually stupid. Which I know isn’t true (even if I like Hayden Christensen, shut up Matt). So, when Matt and our buddies Tara and Martin came over to jam today, I was feeling some serious anxiety about my drumming abilities. Because we picked some pretty tough songs to learn, and I had been stinking it up practicing alone.
But, I did it people. I did my best, and some parts didn’t sound half bad. And some parts were a complete fiasco. Most importantly, I had a lot of fun… even though I stopped at one point to stare blankly at Martin and blink like aliens had just wiped my brain. I think as adults, we all have a tendency to stop learning new skills. Because it’s intimidating and we don’t sponge up knowledge like we used to. Do you notice that your brain isn’t what it used to be? I certainly do. And learning to rock out on my little drum set isn’t happening over night. It also seems to help if I practice… Go figure.
Maybe someday we’ll be good enough to record our little jam sessions and put them up on the website. We do a mean version of Radiohead’s No Surprises. However, I think Matt suffers a bit from this same character weakness. And at the rate we are playing WoW and working on www.squirrelsofdoom.com, I think jam time might be a bit limited