In Episode 536: Trying Something New: How to Keep Trying, Katy continues to have epiphanies as she challenges herself every week in her pottery class.
In a continuation of our earlier Trying Something New episode, we talk about what it is that keeps us trying when those new things inevitably continue to be hard work.
We also discuss those “fantasy self” items we buy for ourselves when, full of ambition, we decide we are going to start a new hobby before we really know what it entails.
We also take the opportunity to hear from our listeners about the hardest things they’ve ever tried.
Make sure you listen to the first installment of this topic first, Episode 534: Trying Something New: It’s Supposed to Be Hard.
You can listen to the episode right here, or find the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, and elsewhere.
Related Episodes:
Episode 534: Trying Something New: It’s Supposed to Be Hard
Episode 454: Trying New Things, Opera Edition
Episode 53: FLUX (with John Wynn)
Episode 34: VENTURE (with Toni DeBella)
Five key takeaways from the episode:
- Katy and Tiffany discuss their experiences trying difficult new skills, like pottery and motorcycle riding, and how perseverance is often necessary to improve.
- They explore the concept of “fantasy self” purchases, items bought with aspirational intentions that often go unused, like pasta makers or scuba gear.
- Listeners shared examples of the hardest things they’ve tried, including surfing, computer science, playing ukulele, and learning to swim as an adult.
- The hosts reflect on how some skills may come naturally while others remain challenging despite practice, and how breakthrough moments can occur unexpectedly.
- They announce an upcoming Rome trip for listeners in October 2025 and encourage support for the podcast through Patreon to reach sustainability goals.
Full Episode Transcript:
Katy
Support for the Bittersweet Life comes from our listeners. This is an independent production, not backed by any financial institution except for the love and care of the people who listen to it. Sydney, Nancy, Anna, thank you so much for hearing my calls the last few weeks and responding. We have a fundraising goal right now to try to bring in $1,000 a month or more to help us pay the bills and to hire some production help to get us through the summer and the fall to come and we can get there with you. If this is a show that you love and you’ve never supported it or you’ve supported it in the past and are looking to re-up, join us at patreon.com/thebittersweetlifepodcast. There’s a link in the show notes Right now in our mission to earn $1,000 a month or more on a regular basis to help get us on stable footing. We are at $847 a month, 135 of you contributing now, tons more of you listen to this show. That is a very small percentage. If we were to get even just a handful of you, we can make that goal. We’re getting close. Your contribution of $5 a month or more not only helps us, it benefits you as well. Bonus episodes, special content, live meetups, even some of Tiffany’s mother in law’s coveted Italian recipes will be released soon. Visit patreon.com the bittersweet LifePodcast. There’s a link in the show notes. You can be our hero, just like Sydney, Nancy and Anna. And thanks. Welcome to Rome. This is the Bittersweet Life with Katy Sewall and Tiffany Parks. Hello. This is the Bittersweet Life. I’m Katy Sewall.
Tiffany
I’m Tiffany Parks.
Katy
Tiffany in Rome, Katy in Seattle. It’s quite windy in Seattle as we record this. So if you hear any howling in my background, that’s the wind getting through my window that I can’t quite get shut. So yes, as I’m talking to you, Tiffany, I am watching debris from pine trees just floating across the world. I mean, you should see the back alley behind my house. It is so littered with plant debris it’s almost comic. But you know, this is what we call in Seattle January, because usually April and May are quite beautiful. And then June comes along and you think, well, look at us swimmingly going along and all of a sudden it’s rain and wind and it kind of looks like winter outside. So a lot of people complain about it more than I do. I tend to be pretty optimistic about June you know, I think, well, whatever we’re having, it’s probably temporary. But today we are going to kind of circle back to a topic we did a couple weeks ago about trying hard things, referencing Back to episode 534. So if you have not yet heard that episode, I think this is going to make a lot more sense if you listen to that one first, because we are going to be just following up on things that we talked about during that episode. But we were talking about if you don’t feel like doing that, trying hard things. And sometimes when you try those hard things, they’re nothing like you expect. I was referencing taking a pottery class and thinking it would be somehow meditative and relaxing and finding that it was the exact opposite of that. Not only was it not meditative, it was extremely challenging and really showed me that it’s been a long time since I have completely failed at something. So. So I guess I felt like I was taking classes that were stretching myself, but maybe playing it a little safe until I got into pottery class and found myself completely out of my own depth. But I do want to say, we got so many letters of encouragement from listeners about my pottery. Lots of people saying that pottery was also the hardest thing they had ever tried. But a lot of other people saying, and I posted n our social media some pictures of my fails, my failed bowls, my somewhat successful cups.
Tiffany
I think some of them were good. Some of them were really good.
Katy
Well, the cups are structurally sound enough that they still exist in the world. The pictures of the bowls that I posted were not structurally sound. Had they dried, they would have just fallen apart, cracked, bent. And so they got taken a picture of, posted on Instagram, and then quite quietly folded back up into a little clay ball. So none of those bowls actually survived. But I got so many nice notes of people encouraging me and saying, like, oh, yeah, no, they don’t look that bad. I think you’re getting the hang of this, you know, or whatever. And it did change my approach to going into class that day. After we did that episode, going into the following class, I went in so much more optimistically than I had gone the previous weeks, thinking, like, okay, yeah, I’m ready to fail. I’m gonna, you know, I’m gonna learn all about this. And, you know, and I totally failed again. Of course, like I said, all the bowls went back into balls. But I will say that I was approaching it almost more like a scientist, where I’m like, well, what would happen to the clay if I stuck my finger Right here, you know, or, like, what would happen if I held my hands in such and such a manner? And I got lucky because the class, it was coming out of a holiday weekend for us here in the United States, and so a lot of people weren’t there. It was a much quieter night than nights previously. So I was able to go up to the teacher and just say things like, how should I be holding my hands when I am trying to do such and such a thing? Actually grab my hands and put them in the position that you would be holding your own hands. You know, so a lot of, like, ability to talk back and forth like that, and also realizing, like, you’re not just out of your depth because you don’t know how to shape things. We’re dealing with, like, this clay on a molecular level. Like, I was trying to ask this other assistant in the classroom, like, why do I have to make it into a cone shape and flatten it back out and make it into a cone shape and flatten it back out before I can start making it into a bowl shape? And she said, well, you’re trying to get all the molecules moving in the same direction. And at which point I. If I had had pencils in my hand, I would have just thrown them up. But because, you know, you’re like, oh, gosh, you know, this is not just, can I move my hands? Right. You need to understand this as a substance before you are actually able to create anything of real quality out of it. But I did want to bring this back up as a topic because of a conversation I had with my teacher, sort of off of what you and I had talked about. Remember when you said. Well, first I asked him, because, you know, when he does a demonstration of how to make a bowl at the beginning of class, it looks so easy. You know, he just puts the clay right into the center of the wheel. You know, like, a lot of what they teach you for week one is how to center the clay on the wheel. It’s so hard to actually center the clay that that’s a skill you have to practice a bunch. I’m still practicing that, and I probably will be for the rest of my life. But he’ll center it so fast, and then he makes it into a bowl. So then I was asking him, since it was quieter and maybe I was putting off working on my stuff a little bit because it’s frustrating. I was asking him, well, was this just something that you had a natural knack for? Like, when you first started going into a class and figuring this out. You had something. You had a thing. And he said, oh, gosh, no, I. It took me two years to properly center the clay. Two years. And of course, that reminded me, Tiffany, of the thing you were saying about playing the violin, which was that it can take two years to make a single, clear, clean note on the violin. And then you. And I had asked, well, how? Why? What keeps a violinist trying to get that clean note when it’s just frustration after frustration? And so I gave him your example of that and was sort of like, well, why? Why did you want to do this? And he thought about it for a minute and he’s like, huh, I don’t really know. He’s like, I just got kind of fascinated with the idea that I could start to figure out what the clay was doing. And he’s like, I also had been a person who drew art prior to doing this. Everything I did was visual. And I loved the idea of making something that was both artistic and useful, rather than just a painting or a picture. And what do you do? You hang it up, you look at it. But he’s like, I really love the idea of making an actual object. But I will say that the breakthrough moment, the thing that made me feel that. That this was something that I absolutely loved, was the first time I ever washed a cup that I had made myself. And it was a revelation because my hand fit perfectly inside of it. Because, of course, you know, his hand was the one that made it. Made it exactly. And he said, and that was just a turning point for me. Like, look at what I have been able to do now. He’s been doing it for 17 years, and he says that, you know, he does consider it an art, like the art he was making when he was making drawings and trying to sell them. But it’s so much more accessible. People will buy a bowl or a cup more than they will buy a drawing or a painting. And so he’s like, as a result, my art is everywhere. Whereas before it was always with, like, one person or two people. And with a painting or a drawing, it was also harder to part with because I might have been working on it for weeks or months, but with a bowl, I might be working on it for a couple weeks, maybe alongside many other bowls that I’m working on, you know, so it’s, like, easier to let your baby go into the world, I guess.
Tiffany
Right?
Katy
I don’t know. I thought that was all very interesting, particularly that idea of the breakthrough, you know, and that the breakthrough was the size of his hand. That is cool. I was talking to my therapist about this. Later on, we often talk about the artistic process, and she was saying, you know, she’s always found it interesting how willing I am to ask people questions like that in real life. You know, just go up to a teacher and be like, what was it for you? And she asked me the question, when you ask people that stuff, do you always find out what you wanted to know? And I said, no, I often find out something. I would have never thought to think that was such an example of that. I would have never thought to think that the size of your hand fitting perfectly into the size of your cup would have been the breakthrough moment. But it made me wonder about, like, breakthrough moments in all kinds of people’s lives. But of course, I’ll never get to just, you know, interview the world, but I won’t.
Tiffany
You could. That could be a project. That sounds like a fun project.
Katy
Breakthrough moments, yes. Feel free to submit your breakthrough moments to us if you have some. I. I love stories like that because it is counterintuitive. But we did ask, of course, our listeners to weigh in a little bit on some of the hardest things that they had ever tried to do. I mean, you have a smattering of them right there, don’t you, from what people posted on social media?
Tiffany
Yeah. One of my favorites is actually my mom’s, which, when I first posted it, I didn’t even. I don’t know why I didn’t see her name. And so I. I kind of reposted hers after, and. But she wrote taking motorcycle lessons when I was 68.
Katy
Wow. Do you have any recollection of that? Of her doing that?
Tiffany
Well, I mean, I was. I know. I remember that she did it. I remember that she did it. I was already, you know, long out of the house. Yeah. I think she told me eventually she had to. She kind of gave up, because physically, the strength that it takes. Similar to pottery.
Katy
Yeah.
Tiffany
The strength that it takes to hold that machine up. It’s heavy. It’s heavy. And I remember when I was first living in Rome, I had been in Rome maybe less than a year. A year. I was dating a guy who. He tried to teach me for, like, a minute how to ride a scooter. And it wasn’t one of those tiny little Vespas. It was a big scooter. It was not the size of a motorcycle, but it was a hefty size. And I could not hold that thing up. I couldn’t. And when I tried to do it, and I mean, I had the. I don’t remember. Something happened. I wasn’t hurt or anything, but I remember trying to stop, but when I stopped and put my foot down, I couldn’t hold it up. And I ended up revving the engine with my right hand, not realizing that’s what was going to happen. And I just. It totally freaked me out. So the thought that my mom was doing that with an even bigger. Bigger vehicle. I understand why she. I think she was able to do it. It’s not like she never managed to ride it. I’m pretty sure that she and my stepfather were part of a motorcycle club at a certain point. My. My stepfather stayed in the motorcycle club longer than she did. But. Yeah, I don’t know.
Katy
It’s just.
Tiffany
To me, that’s. That’s one of those impossible things. The idea of riding a motorcycle just doesn’t look easy. Doesn’t look like I could do it. I wouldn’t even dream of trying.
Katy
Well, and what. Have you ever met those people who are kind of the opposite? Like, you know, your mom took a motorcycle class. I’m taking a pottery class. But have you ever had those friends or perhaps dated those men who, when they are interested in something, they just sort of, like, buy all the things and then give it a try? You know, you’re interested in pottery, so they buy the pottery wheel and set it up in the basement. And then, you know, I don’t know, just. Your mother riding the motorcycle reminded me of a man I used to date in college who really wanted to ride a motorcycle. Just thought that would be fun and probably cheaper than having a car because, you know, less gas and less. Well, his wasn’t one of those, like, giant hogs or something, you know, it was just like a sort of average motorcycle. And so he went to, I don’t know, some dealer and taught himself how to ride a motorcycle in the parking lot. He bought it before he knew how to ride it.
Tiffany
Oh, my gosh.
Katy
You know, and so bought it and then spent, like, the next hour tooling around the parking lot and then drove it off and then went and got the motorcycle license that’s required. And it’s like, almost like you’re going at it backwards. You’re like, I’m gonna do this. I’m gonna figure it out. I don’t need to know anything prior to me doing it, which I. Yeah.
Tiffany
I admire it because it’s. First of all, it takes the courage to do that. And secondly, when you do do that, I think you’re more likely to succeed. Because you. You kind of don’t give yourself an out.
Katy
That’s true. You’ve now sunk a whole bunch of money into it. Yeah, you better figure it out.
Tiffany
You better figure it out. Or you can buy a piano and not really play the piano like I did.
Katy
Yeah.
Tiffany
But it’s not like I had never, ever tried, you know?
Katy
Yeah.
Tiffany
And I’m happy. And I’m very happy I have my piano, even though I don’t play very much.
Katy
But I mean, aesthetically, at least, a piano adds something. And I suppose if you standing next to your motorcycle, that is an aesthetic choice also. It’s a vibe.
Tiffany
Yeah, it’s a vibe. But, you know, I imagine that you’d want to ride it.
Katy
You would think. Yeah, you’d think. Yeah, I’ve heard. No.
Tiffany
Have you ever done anything like that? Have you ever invested in something without knowing if you liked it or were capable of doing it?
Katy
Not a major investment. The only thing that pops to mind was when I was just starting to learn how to scuba dive, and I really wanted to be one of those people, which I don’t know why I thought I would ever be one of these people, but one of those people that just keeps scuba gear in the trunk of their car and a nice afternoon pops up in the Pacific Northwest, and, you know, you would just drive it to Alki beach, which is one of our great beaches, and, you know, get the tanks out of the trunk, strap them on, dive in, I don’t know, grab a Dungeness crab or two for dinner and, like, head home. Which I knew people at the time who did that, because if you love Dungeness crab, fresh Dungeness crab is right there. You just got to get into the water and, like, swim after them and tuck them in a bag and go home. So I. I knew a woman who was selling her tanks, and not only that, they were slightly smaller than normal, so they were better for somebody of my size because I’m a shorter person. And I was like, yeah, sure, I’ll give you the money for them. And I got them serviced, filled with oxygen, and checked over to make sure everything was fine. I must have driven around with those tanks in the trunk of my car for years. I never once actually tried to use them. No, because. Because I was not dry suit certified. I was only wetsuit certified by the time. And I don’t know if you’ve ever set foot in the Puget Sound, but It is, like, 45 degrees Fahrenheit, probably at most. It’s always cold. And it was Just so cold that I just couldn’t bring myself, even if I had the confidence, to scuba dive alone, which I do not.
Tiffany
No, you’re not supposed to, Katy. You’re not ever supposed to go alone.
Katy
If you’re just walking in off the shore, you could probably get away with it. But all that aside, that’s.
Tiffany
That’s intense. I did not know that about you.
Katy
The tanks are. Finally got sold. Think about how much gas I wasted carrying those around.
Tiffany
For real? For real. That’s what I call a fantasy self purchase. It’s your fantasy self. We all have our fantasy self. We all have these things that we want to be and we want to do, and we waste a lot of money on it and a lot of time and effort sometimes lugging stuff around, moving, you know, equipment between various homes that you never use. For me, it was the pasta maker. I think I’ve told the story. Stop me if I have, but I bought a pasta maker, an old fashioned crank, metal crank pasta maker in Italy when I was there. The summer after my sophomore year in college, I went with my sister to visit our Italian relatives. And for whatever reason, I bought this thing. It was, there was the lira, so everything was dirt cheap. And I was like, wow, I have to have this. You know, I. I had just, you know, moved into a new apartment in Boston by myself. And I was like visualizing the kitchen and like, oh, I’m going to have this little pasta maker on like a little kitchen cart and it’s going to look so cool and I’ll have like my checkered apron hanging from the hook and I’m going to make pasta and everyone’s going to know that I spend time in Italy because I make pasta on the regular.
Katy
Yeah.
Tiffany
Yeah. I never, I never use that thing. Not one time. It looked good on the little cart.
Katy
End up getting it.
Tiffany
Yeah, it looked good, but it gathered dust. And those things are not easy to dust because they got lots of little grooves. And then I moved it. I moved it. So I lugged it back from Italy. I did stay in that apartment for, for several years, but then I moved to Montreal. So I lugged it to Montreal and then I lugged it back. And then I moved a couple of times in Boston after coming back from grad school. And then when it came time to move to Italy, you know what I did? I sold it. I’m like, I’m not bringing this thing back to Italy. Who am I trying to kid? I do not make pasta.
Katy
I never will make pasta. If you’re Moving to Italy, where everybody makes pasta, it’s sort of like, well, why would I be doing it? You know?
Tiffany
Exactly. But the experts take this.
Katy
Yeah, yeah.
Tiffany
And also, like, fresh pasta is very available. So that was my. My most famous fantasy self purchase. I give myself a pass because I was, you know, 19 or 20 years old. But I’m sure, I’m sure if I sat and thought about it, there are many, many more fantasy self purchases.
Katy
I love the idea of the fantasy self. I think the fantasy self comes into real play when you’re putting together something like a wedding registry or like a. I don’t know, maybe a baby registry too. Or any kind of even maybe when somebody’s like, put a birthday list together, you know, on Amazon, we’ll all, you know, those kinds of things. But the wedding registry is the one example I know of living through this. People are going to get you things that maybe you wouldn’t be able to afford to buy yourself, and especially not when you’re starting out with somebody brand new. And you also have to come up with enough things, like depending on however big your wedding is, you have to come up with enough things with a wide enough price range that a whole bunch of different people can contribute, which I thought was quite strange and difficult to sort out. Not unfun, but one of those things, those aspirational things, was a KitchenAid. And I feel like in the United States, asking for a KitchenAid during your wedding is very common, I feel, or at least it used to be. And I still have it. It still sits on my counter. I still use it occasionally. We’re talking like two to three times a year maximum, because I am not a baker. And the best reason to have a KitchenAid is for baking. And every time I do bake something and I have the KitchenAid, I’m like, wow, this is an amazing piece of equipment. I can’t believe I actually own this thing. That just saved me two hours of work. But at the same point, you know me, I’m a. I’m a savory, I’m a salty. I’m not a sweet person. And so, you know, even if I were to make a batch of cookies every week, I don’t really want them. So then I need to have, like, a lot of neighbors who want my cookies. And, you know, I just. It’s not gonna happen. So I think that was another one of those things of like, you know, what a really well appointed home looks like. It has a KitchenAid sitting on the counter. I don’t even know if that’s an aspirational self or, like, an aspirational life. Like, I’m gonna have the perfect American kitchen, and that is going to include a KitchenAid.
Tiffany
I think it’s all wrapped up in one. You want to be the kind of person who has the KitchenAid on the countertop. I would love a KitchenAid, but, yeah, I just don’t. I mean, I didn’t have a wedding registry, sadly, because they don’t really exist over here. Maybe now they do a little more than they did before. But there was no Amazon in Italy when I got married, Right. It, like, popped up, like, the year later. I was like, ma’am, there’d only been Amazon, but I would have totally asked for one. There wouldn’t have been space, probably on my kitchen counter for it, but I would have wanted to keep it out on the kitchen counter. I would have, like, given up precious real estate on my counter to display it, and it would have been a gorgeous color. But, yeah, I probably don’t bake enough to make that. That’s why I haven’t bought one for myself. I’m like, this is an investment if I’m gonna buy it for myself. So I have the hand mixer, and it’s definitely tiring. Sometimes I think, wow, if I just threw everything in in a KitchenAid like my mom had, wow, that’d be so easy. I could just, like, sit down and relax and read a book. Well, as opposed to now. And I’m like, you know, trying to cream the butter, and it’s a nightmare.
Katy
True. But you know what’s hard to move is a KitchenAid. Yeah, that thing is heavy. Katy here, popping in for just a moment. I want to give you something to think about. If you live in the United States, chances are that you are already sick of talking about politics in the lead up to the election that we are facing in November. According to the Pew Research Center, 65% of Americans, when asked, said they felt exhausted at the thought of politics. We are just getting started in this election cycle, and. And no matter what side you stand on, one thing we can all be certain of is this is going to be an exhausting, irritating, and stressful election year, most likely. So here’s something I want you to think about. When the election is exactly one month away, where would you like to be? Do you want to be at home stressing out in the last month before the election? Or would you prefer to be in Rome learning about ancient and medieval and Renaissance Rome, seeing how this beautiful and ancient city still influences Our thought and life and culture today. Do you want to be seeing hidden sites that tourists and locals alike never get to see? This. October 2024, from the 6th to the 12th, Tiffany and I are taking a group of lucky listeners on a tour through Rome, a tour like no other. We want to open doors of thought and sight so that you walk away from Rome feeling refreshed rather than exhausted. And what could feel better during an election year than being refreshed and inspired rather than depleted and annoyed? Space is limited to 10 rooms only. You can come by yourself or bring one friend. I hope you will consider joining us. Send us an email bittersweetlifepodcastmail.com and I will send you all of the details. Bittersweetlifepodcastmail.comand how great it is. Well, you don’t just have to take my word for it. Here is one of our listeners who traveled with us to Rome last year.
Speaker C
I would absolutely recommend was just one of the best weeks I can recall. I mean, all this stuff was intriguing to me and I didn’t know much about it. So it was a week of education and pleasure. Of course, lots of nice people gathered together. And Tiffany, extraordinary guide, knowledgeable. Oh, my God, it’s unbelievable what you keep in that brain of yours. And then Katy always does such a wonderful job of things. So, yeah, I don’t know what else to say. It was just a great week.
Katy
All right, send us a note. Let us give you all the information. Bittersweetlifepodcastmail.com come to Rome and be renewed in the run up to this election. Now back to the show. So before we end, what are some other things that people tried that they found to be the hardest thing they ever tried?
Tiffany
Surfing. Your sister?
Katy
Yeah, my sister. We got a lot of family responses from this. My sister surfing. I was there when she was trying that.
Tiffany
Yeah. That’s another thing like motorcycle riding that I do not think looks easy. I mean, I think for me it’s like mostly like, physical, athletic things that to me look impossible. I’m gonna go there. I would love to learn how to surf, but I just, I just don’t know if I have the strength. And you really have to be flexible to surf.
Katy
Well, I think you have to also be well balanced.
Tiffany
Well balanced? Yeah. I don’t think I could do it like, I, you know, those. I mean, I don’t know if they’re popular in the States, but they’re very popular here in Italy, especially, like two, three years ago. They were super popular with teenage kids. I Think they call it a hoverboard. I don’t know, like a horizontal skateboard. Picture that with two very large wheels and you just stand on it and you kind of. The way you move your feet propels you forward or backward and you lean to turn it and stuff. And it looks like the easiest thing on the planet. And somebody in our courtyard had one. It was Aurelio’s friend’s big brother had one. And I was like, oh, let me try this. You know, I always game for, you know, trying stuff like that. And so I get on this thing and I mean, thank God. God. One of my friend’s husbands happened to be standing right behind me because I got on that thing and it just started moving and I fell backwards. I was propelled backwards and he caught me and I was like, oh, my God, I would have fallen so bad.
Katy
Yeah.
Tiffany
And I just. I don’t. So I don’t think I can do, like, a balance in, like, a yoga class. Like, I’m very good at balancing on one foot, but if the ground is moving, not so much.
Katy
I mean, I have never tried surfing, but I don’t know, I was a skateboarder for so many years. I have to imagine I’d be okay. I don’t know.
Tiffany
Never tried that. Yeah, I think you’d probably be better than me for sure.
Katy
Hopefully. Just because I have balanced on other things, I’ve had more practice navigating a thing with my feet. Yeah. And by the way, if you can hear somebody jackhammering in the background. Sorry about that. It’s not just the wind today. They’re also ripping a house down up the street. So this is going to be our life for a while.
Tiffany
I do not hear it good.
Katy
So I know Michael, who texted us over on the Patreon text chain. He said that a class on computer science was the hardest thing he ever tried. And I wrote him back and I said, well, why did you take that? And he said, oh, it was required for my degree.
Tiffany
I.
Katy
Obviously, you have to do it. But we’ve all had those things where that were required, where you thought, how am I ever going to get through this? Yeah, I’m sure. What else do you get?
Tiffany
Well, learning the ukulele.
Katy
Ooh, that’s a good one.
Tiffany
And the same person says, and high school biology.
Katy
Okay. Yeah.
Tiffany
For me, it was high school chemistry.
Katy
Yes.
Tiffany
I could not make it make sense. I don’t get it. I don’t. The teacher could bring in the little wooden models of molecules, and I’m like, you’re speaking Greek to me. I don’t know what that is. I can’t see that in the world. So I still don’t understand it. And if I hadn’t had a tutor, I would have failed chemistry. And I just scraped by with, I think, a C or a C minus, which I was very excited about.
Katy
On a total side note, I mean, I don’t know if you’re picking up any of this noise, but I’m just like, okay, we got a jackhammer. We got the wind. And Tiffany, I kid you not, a garbage truck just pulled up behind my house.
Tiffany
I think I can hear that.
Katy
Oh, I’m just like, what else could it be? Add something else. Where’s the sirens? You know, where’s those kids getting out of school?
Tiffany
The lawnmower.
Katy
The lawnmower. The leaf blower? What else? What else? All right, well, how about one or two more?
Tiffany
Somebody else says pottery. And learning to play tennis as an adult fell in love with both.
Katy
Oh, I love that. See, that’s what I mean. Like, you think that you would be terrible at surfing, but, you know, you may never know. You might find, like, oh, hey, I’m great at this.
Tiffany
Yeah. I mean, and that’s a question for another day. What are the things that you were naturally good at that, like, you picked up on immediately and.
Katy
Which is easy for you? Well, and from that comment, it almost seems like, whatever. It was hard, but it became. That’s the thing that I keep thinking, like, if I keep. Keep at this pottery class, is there going to be that moment where all of a sudden I’m like, I get it. All of a sudden, it comes into clarity and, oh, no, I think that.
Tiffany
That is not going to happen with everything for everyone. I think that everyone has their things that they will eventually master if they work at it long enough. And I think that we all have our things that we’ll just never be good at. I mean, I. I don’t mean to be pessimistic. I’m not saying you personally, you might be, you know, a budding pottery artist and, you know, you don’t have a second career, but I feel like there are things now again, I don’t know. Maybe if you tried hard enough and worked hard enough at it, you’d get. There is some theory about, like, the 10,000 hours of mastery. Like, you can master anything in 10,000 hours. I don’t know. Maybe.
Katy
But I do love that she came to love both of them. I could see that. I have. I have a similar tennis dream, but.
Tiffany
So far, Is that a fantasy self? You see yourself in the little white shorts?
Katy
Yeah. Our redemption self. I live within walking distance of a public tennis court, and I think that that makes me feel like I should be playing tennis. Because you’re like, well, it’s right there. And so then for my birthday, like two years ago, Derek bought me tennis rackets and tennis balls, but he will not go and play with me. He’s like, go find somebody else. And so I. Two years later, and I might go find who else? You know, you’re the one that’s in the house. Like, that’s a couple blocks away from a public tennis court. Who else is around? You want me to call a friend and try to get them to come over so that we can walk a block away and play tennis? You don’t want to just go hit a ball around for a second. But it’s been over two years now and we still haven’t done it. So they’re brand new. If anybody wants them, I could sell them to you. No, no, I’m not giving it up yet. Not yet.
Tiffany
Try to find a tennis partner. Just see if you like it.
Katy
Yeah, I mean, I took tennis for one week in high school back when I was like, you know what? I’ve been doing a lot of theater for a long time. I’m going to become an athlete. I don’t know what I was thinking. So I went through all the medical tests that you have to do to get cleared, and I joined the tennis team. I was there for long enough to be pictured in the tennis team picture.
Tiffany
Nice.
Katy
Which I didn’t even have, like, the proper clothes. So some girl loaned me her tennis team sweatshirt and another one loaned me a tennis skirt. And I’m sitting, I kid you not, in the very front row of this picture. Like, I’m a prominent member of this tennis team. But it turned out a lot of these people on this tennis team had been playing tennis for years. And so they wouldn’t let me and a few other people who were brand new play at all, like, at all. So I would go to practice and just like, watch other people play. And I did that for a week. And I was finally like, what am I doing here? What’s the point? If you’re not going to even try to teach me or let me do anything, I’d rather go back to theater. So I quit. And then it was like, well, you have all these medical tests done. Maybe you could join the track team. And I was like, yeah, aspirationally, I’m going to Join the track team. And my sister was really good at track, so I was like, well, okay, maybe it’s, like, natural. Maybe I’d be a great sprinter. And first, you’re like, the tiniest girl. Well, you know, but I got the strong thighs. That’s why I’m good at, like, gymnastics too. Because you’re, like, low to the ground, good center of gravity, strong shoulder legs.
Tiffany
But runners are technically long.
Katy
I mean, you’re nothing good. Yeah, you’re nothing good on day one. Anyway, so we get to day one, and this is. This is my downfall. Tiffany. Thank God. I had to go to a play rehearsal day one. So I had to leave midway through the practice. Okay. It was. And it was already agreed to before I went in there. Day one, we’re all sitting on the bleachers. I’m feeling optimistic. And the coach says, all right, everybody, we’re gonna just do a quick warm up here. Let’s do a mile around the track. For me, like, running a mile was an absolute nightmare. We had the presidential physical fitness tests every year. The mile was the part of it that would kill me. And everybody just, like, took off running. And I was the last person in. Running slowly after all these people made it four times around the track. But I was the last person in. And that was just the warm up. And luckily after that, I had to go to the theater and I was never back again. That was the end of my track career.
Tiffany
I wouldn’t have even tried, but. But I don’t blame you one bit. And I said, I really was quite a good runner. They don’t really have track and field at his school, but I think if they did, I think he’d be good at it, especially the jumping stuff. But I said to him, I did track and field. You know, when you’re in elementary school, you do everything for like, two weeks, Right.
Katy
Kind of get a chance to jump stuff and throw stuff.
Tiffany
Yeah. So I was like, what do you think? Do you think I was the one winning the races, like, the first person, or do you think I was the last person?
Katy
Well, given that you couldn’t hold a motorcycle up, I would say last.
Tiffany
Well, I was asking Aurelio, you know, maybe like, get his.
Katy
I thought you were like, okay. What did he think?
Tiffany
No. Yeah. Well, he said, you know, he’s very diplomatic. He said, I don’t know, maybe in the middle. And I said, nope, I was dead last. There’s not even a number for it. I was dead last. Every race. Every single race. Like you could count on It. I was the last. And you know what? I don’t mind. I don’t mind. That’s just one of the things that I’m not good at. I’m not an athletic person, although I’m very good at yoga.
Katy
Yeah. So there you go.
Tiffany
And I was very good at dance, too. I was very good at dance.
Katy
Different types of athleticism. All right, well, take us out with one more. What’s one other hard thing? One of our listeners tried learning how.
Tiffany
To swim properly as an adult. And I think she. I think she wrote a longer comment, our private messages, because she said that she had never learned to swim and she could stay afloat, but she said she was swimming like a. Like an old lady, which I’m not sure what. How old ladies swim, but, you know, just sort of, like always with her head above water. She would always swim with her head above water and just kind of paddle along. And she finally. I can’t remember what it was that pushed her into taking swimming lessons. I think it was a friend. And she said she was terrified of having her face underwater, which I remember when my stepmother was learning to swim, because she had never learned to swim as a child. And I remember going to the pool with her and my dad when I was still quite little, and he was trying to get her to get her face wet, and she just. It just scared her so much. And so that is a real thing, you know, for people. And you don’t have to be necessarily afraid of water to have that fear of getting your face underwater.
Katy
Yeah.
Tiffany
So.
Katy
Oh, that’s a good one.
Tiffany
That’s a big deal. That’s a big deal that she faced that fear and she learned to swim.
Katy
Yeah. That’s great. Well, I want to thank everybody who sent in your. Your hard things. That was really cool to read the list and the variety from people of things that we’ve tried in our lives. I guess a lot of those, like, we didn’t really ask so much the why sometimes, and that would have been also very curious. But now my question is, aspirationally, what’s the aspirational self that never came to be the thing that you’re like, you know what? I’m gonna hunt for Dungeness crab myself out of my car and take it home. What’s your Dungeness crab thing?
Tiffany
What’s your pasta maker?
Katy
What’s your pasta maker? Send it in.
Tiffany
Yeah, send it in, and we’ll do a whole episode on your aspirational self, your fantasy self. Items.
Katy
Yeah, that’s fine.
Tiffany
I got a few more.
Katy
All right, so bittersweetlifepodcastmail.com is the email address, bittersweetlifepodcastmail.Com you can also ask us for information about our upcoming October Road Rome trip at that address. We’ll send you all the information. And of course, you can always reach us on social media. We are mostly on Instagram and Facebook right now. And if you are a member of our Patreon helping us support the show for as little as $5 a month or more, you can now text us, which is how we heard from people on this topic as well. That is patreon.com/bittersweetlifepodcast. We are trying to reach that $1,000 a month or more goal, a bunch of sustaining members to help us pay our bills a little bit more sustainably, I guess is the perfect word for it. And yeah, so join us over there. There’s a link in the show notes. And until next time, this is the Bittersweet Life. I’m Katy Sewall.
Tiffany
I’m Tiffany Parks.
Katy
Join us again. Bye.