Me + Ground = Brakes

It’s funny, I think the last time I felt this useless was when I was still at school. As you grow-up you tend to shy away from things that you aren’t naturally good at and concentrate on your talents. Thus you feel like a competent and skilful person. This is why I have spent my life acting, writing, telling jokes and playing with computers. Now, for reasons that momentarily escape me, I have plunged myself into an environment where everything I am required to do is something that I have no facility for. Building, destroying, speaking French, tidying … the list goes on and on and today came to include skiing. The surprising thing about all this is that, bar the odd moment of introversion, I’m loving it. I rejoiced as I struck the icy ground again and again with my face, I marvelled at my speed and my inability to even begin to control it. I sailed through the air with a big grin plastered across my face, a tiny patch of red against all that majestic, heart-stopping, tumbling whiteness. For four hours I was a mass of legs, skis, snow, poles and blind faith, parts of me flying off in all directions, jubilant and terrified and alive. Later on I drilled holes, bent my protesting body into complex pieces of origami to access stubborn screws and cut ragged lines through various pieces of wood with a jig saw. I’m not perfect, I’m not even close to competent but I’m beginning to suspect that may be okay.