Interesting sound bite from a Dawg here:
For today’s Wondering, tell me about something you had to work hard to perfect, through practice or patience, that made you excellent. I’ll start:
I’m a natural introvert. It’s baked in my DNA. One hallmark of introverts is their inability to express themselves, they’re corner huggers at parties, they’re quiet. One thing I’ll say is that beer and UGA broke me out of that. A public speaking class at UGA helped me a lot, and helped me more when the GA who taught it asked me out for a date. And my public speaking project was on the 2nd Amendment and why it was important for us to have the Right to Bear Arms.
In retrospect, I shoulda asked for a second date instead of stumping for the Amendment, but I digress. No, I don’t digress, she was as hot as a South Georgia summer under a clear blue sky beating down on rich, ripe watermelons, and I shoulda had more confidence. Ah, choices. And the life we lead. But, to this day, my remedial English class at UGA along with this fateful class has turned me into the man I am today. I wouldn’t be writing this prose without it.
Discuss, scamps.
Golf swing. Far from perfect and short game is lacking but at my level the swing itself has taken years to become reliable. This has provided me with the ability to play with anyone, anywhere and thus exposed me to more places, people and networking than anything else I could have done. On vacation Saturday I met three business opportunities and a realtor we needed.
Golf– that’s one I wish I followed through on. It’s the one sport that beat me, and I finally just gave up.
Bear Bryant is rolling over in his grave….
“Practice does not make perfect, everyone practices!!
PERFECT PRACTICE makes perfect!!”
“she was as hot as a South Georgia summer under a clear blue sky beating down on rich, ripe watermelons…”
JP, that ain’t prose…sounds like poetry to me!
Thereās definitely some imagery in there somewhere.
Watermelon analogy reminds me of Will Farrellās shady car dealer soliloquy in Kenny Powers šš:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DBjNVrSIaml/
Ashley Schaffer was one of the best characters in the series
Let the boy watch. Eastbound and Down is hands down one of the best sports parodies Iāve ever watched.
Gin … I make it. It is very good.
Sales…much like golf, it takes hours of practice to find your groove. Once you master the little intricacies, it goes much smoother. Took about 5 years of grinding in the basics to find my groove, but once I did, the sky was the limit.
My job, air traffic control. Iām not very creative so it took me a while to figure it out. When plan A wasnāt going to work, I didnāt know how to come up with a plan B or C. I eventually figured it out and turned out to be pretty good at it. I had to force myself to sit on sector and work (practice) busy traffic early in my career. Years ago my supervisor gave me the best compliment Iāve ever gotten at work. He said, āWhen I have a busy sector and I look up and see you on it, I donāt worryā. Itās been a fun job but Iām done this year.
Public speaking. I won’t say I’m excellent, but I’m good, and if you’d seen my 1st presentation at a national meeting in front of 100s of people, you’ll know that I was starting from the bottom. I was terrified somebody was going to ask me questions I was unable to answer, and I was so obviously nervous (reading off cards in a quavering monotone), I’m sure most people just pitied me.
A couple years later, my wife challenged me to get better, and I gave 4 talks that first year of the challenge. First talk of the challenge year I wrapped it up and asked for questions. A fairly well known Hungarian scientist raised his hand and said I was completely wrong. Without missing a beat, I replied, “Well, that wasn’t really a question. So, does anybody have a question?”. After being told I was completely full of shit, what could anyone ask that was worse? I got better the more I spoke, and lost my fear. I ditched the cards and added humor, and I never sweated public speaking after that.