Very Small Rocks

Alchemy 11-13-2022

Thank you everyone who replied to last week’s newsletter. It sounds like you want to hear more from me about this idea of receivership. I’ll share more contemplations as they come, I’ve been enjoying thinking about what a deeper dive into receivership might look like. More essays? A workshop? I’ll let it simmer. 

Also, thanks for your questions about an IG Q+A. I will put a story up on IG soon to see what questions y’all have for me. The plan is to record a Q+A once a week, with questions sent to me via email here or in response to stories on IG. I’ll go live, but I like the idea of having questions to answer ahead of time, that way people do not have to be present at that magical IG moment when I go live. Y'all can watch the recording whenever you like. Because that is reasonable. 

Onward…

I went skateboarding this morning, which I have learned is definitely the best way to start my day. I have a favorite area where I warm up. Actually if I am being honest, I take a total of 2 warm ups. The first is circling around a peanut bowl at the edge of the park. Few skaters use the peanut bowl and most mornings I kind of have the area to myself to skate around in circles until I need to take a break. I try to be smart about clearing the area of twigs and rocks before I start. It’s a process. The skatepark we skate at is in the middle of a county park. It’s pretty wild and at night, animals jump from the surrounding rocks into the park to cross the hilltop. It is common for rocks and small pebbles to collect on the concrete, especially in the early morning. In preparation, I diligently cleared my path and had gotten up to a pretty good speed when I noticed a small rock coming up fast. It was too late for me to avoid it. I knew I was going to hit it. And I did. I managed to jump off my board before it took me to the ground. 

Win. 

As I cleared the rock out of my way and hopped back on my board, it occurred to me that a year ago, I would have been taken down by that rock. Hard. And it would have taken me the rest of the morning to recover my confidence and feel comfortable again on my board. 

But not today. 

It turns out that practice has made me not only better at succeeding at the skills I have been working on, but it has also made me better at failing. 

And this got me thinking. 

How often do we credit practice with making us better at failure? 

Isn't part of success also inherently getting better at failure? 

How come we don’t think of it that way? 

The pro my kid skates with is a total doll. We all really love him. He’s a good egg with an enormous heart, who just happens to be the spitting image of Jeff Spicoli. Every once in a while he unleashes his genius and shows us what he can really do on a skateboard. And it’s fucking impressive as hell. My kid is cool about it but I’m already the middle aged suburban mom who is trying to learn to skateboard, so I just lean into the uncool of it all and watch him with total excitement and wonder. He can get about 5 feet of air with ease coming off a vert and then into another one all while flipping his board in the air. He looks like he’s flying. Every time he does it I get so excited I take off running out the warehouse door into the parking lot. I cannot believe my eyes. It’s magical to be around someone who can make something so hard look so easy.

And that’s not to say he hits it every time. I’ve seen him fall. A lot. But, with years of practice not only has he gotten really good at defying gravity, he also is really good at falling. In fact, his failures are so good, most of the time he avoids injury. Which, if there is any magic in skateboarding, it is taking injury out of the physics of a fast moving body hitting concrete. 

Getting better at failure is essential in skateboarding. In fact, it might even be more important than success. If you get hurt you can't skate. And it seems the best way to stay on the board and avoid getting hurt is to get really good at failure. 

And maybe this is what we do too. In all things. As we gain skills, practice, go deeper, perhaps we also get better at getting over the hurdles that trip us up. That’s not to say of course that getting good at failure eliminates pain or hurt or the unexpected. It is the small rock you don’t see coming that can trip up even the most skilled skateboarder. 

But getting good at being thrown by the ones you do see, has its merits don’t you think? 

xxx

LAS