Some more I have figured out relating to last post. I’m fucked up about this because I’m weaker than everyone else (in the class). Even if I do get the forms down perfectly before the next belt test (3 weeks), there’s very little chance that I will develop the upper body strength to keep up with the warm-ups in the orange belt class. Which will only become more discouraging.
Ended class last night on a failure. That fucks with me. But something that’s been playing out in my head for months (ok, years) was finally pulled out and shown to me from a new perspective.
I’ve been setting unreasonable goals with no clearly defined, attainable end. And then when I see that I am not producing calculable results, I sink into self-loathing and depression. So last night, with 5 or 10 minutes left, our karate instructor decided to have us do jumping jacks, sit-ups and push-ups till the end of class. I couldn’t do them all. I was so fucking angry at him for setting a goal I had no chance of reaching. And a bit surprised that I was the only one that was angry. Violently angry. Of course, I think I was the only one that couldn’t do it. I was the farthest behind, anyway.
Ok, so, yeah, I see the pattern. Well, the open-ended goal => failure => anger bit anyway. I did notice that I was the only one plotting vengeance. I’m not sure why it fucks with me so much, or how to make it stop. So I’ll keep watching for patterns till I figure it out.
Self-criticism. It’s strange… I have all these expectations for what I should do, and how I should do it. I don’t hold others up to these expectations.
Homeschooling my daughter is more challenging than I had ever thought it would be. Especially now that she has graduated from imitating chimpanzee to idea-generating human. Nothing I have said has convinced her that, though yes, she can draw letters backwards, writing them backwards won’t prepare her for reading and writing words and sentences. And I think she knows that I don’t know what I’m talking about. Because I don’t. It would seem more useful to learn to write the letters correctly the first time. But she has turned drawing letters into a matter of personal expression (or perhaps I have).
Anyway, that’s just one of the many things I hate myself for not being able to figure out. I’m so afraid my ignorance is going to fuck this up for her. Conversely, I’m concerned that never being satisfied with my performance (at anything), is probably more detrimental to her than my lack of expertise in the area of early childhood development. I don’t want to pass my neuroses on to her.
So, I have to learn how to be satisfied with the best I can do. Sounds good, but I honestly believe that my daughter deserves better the best that I can do. Except when I start remembering that what I have to teach her are concepts, not facts. She doesn’t have to pass a test. She just needs to be able to recognize patterns, ask the right questions, and develop her natural curiosity. And maybe she’s right… maybe it doesn’t matter whether you draw the circle of the lowercase “a” clockwise or counter-clockwise. But it’s the not knowing that scares the fuck out of me.
