Today, one of Mama Kat’s prompts is to write about something you wish you were good at. I can’t just name one thing, so instead, I’m going to make a list of skills I wish I possessed.
1. Creative writing. Like I said on Sunday, I don’t really have a vivid imagination at all and my works of creative writing aren’t all that original at all. Now of course Julia Cameron (from The Artist’s Way) and others say you really don’t have to have natural talent to be a creative. Maybe then, I wish I had the perseverance to actually sit down and write those tons of freewrites, raw drafts, etc. it takes to come up with a coherent story in the end.
2. Photography. Okay, I don’t really mean the ability to point the camera correctly, set the right filters, etc. That’s a skill I will never possess due to being blind. I rather mean the ability to find picture-worthy things in my environment and then direct my staff to take pictures.
3. Language learning. This is a broad skill. Again, it is not something I wish I were good at per se – I already think I’m a decent language learner if I set my mind to it. Of course, I wish I were better at phonics in general, so that I could more easily develop decent-sounding speech in the languages I know (which currently is singular language, honestly, as I only know English as a second language). However, as with creative writing, I wish I had the perseverance to actually devote myself to learning a language rather than wanting to be able to write a blog post in said language immediately.
4. Distress tolerance. Ha, let’s share a skill that isn’t just useful for the fun of it. I really wish I were good at tolerating frustration. In dialectical behavior therapy, this is considered a skill that can be learned indeed, but I honestly am highly skeptical about it in my case at least.
What do you wish you were good at?
A Multitude of Musings 
I wish I were good a language learning, I had both Spanish and German in college and still get confused.
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Oh yes, I get that. I took both French and German in high school but forgot all of it after graduation because of lack of practice.
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I’ve tried learning Spanish for years and not succeeded very well. I’m impressed with anyone who can speak more than one language, including you, Astrid!
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Thank you so much for saying that! That’s a huge compliment.
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I was doing Duolingo in Spanish for about a year and then just lost interest. Even though most of the people in El Paso where I live speak Spanish, I don’t get much opportunity to practice.
Going to check out Mama Kat’s prompts. I like writing to a prompt. Sometimes I need to think on the prompt for a bit, other times something comes to me right away. I enjoyed Cameron’s book, too.
I wish I could sing. At least well enough to not embarrass myself when I do it in public.
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Thank you for sharing. Oh, that’s so interesting that, even though most people speak Spanish in your city, you didn’t get much opportunity to practice. As for singing, as a preteen and teen, I was part of a children’s choir even though I sing horribly out of key. I did wish I could sing like the children who were picked by our director of music to get individual lessons back then. Now, not so much.
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That’s a great list of skills that I think quite a lot of people have not mastered, so don’t feel too bad about that. In America, it’s embarrassing really that for the most part we do not learn to speak any language fluently other than English. We are required to take two years of a foreign language class in high school but typically are only offered French or Spanish. And even then we only learn the very basic words and sentences. So you’re already a league ahead of most of the united states in that department!
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Thanks for saying that. Yes, I know most Americans don’t speak any foreign language. Now my English speaking skills are. Horrible too, but then again I rarely speak English.
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