Blog Challenge #11

What's a skill you don't possess that you wish you did?
This is a tough prompt for me to tackle. My immediate thought is “don’t get me started! Don’t even get me started!” An exercise such as this is like my own personal Pandora’s Box because, simply stated, I am undoubtedly my own harshest critic.

So I’ll go dig deep and use my elementary school report-writing “skills” as a jumping-off point.

Skill: A developed talent or ability. http://dictionary.com, citing American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th ed.

Oy.

Allow me to explain. Looking back on my life thus far, I feel I have lived the quintessential “Jill of all trades, master of none” life. OK, maybe not all trades, but a good many. And I could get by in all of my endeavors, be it athletic, artistic, academic, or social. But I never really had a talent or ability that I excelled at enough to really have it develop into a mastered skill, per se.

I don’t have anything that’s my thing. You know, the type of thing that a person would say: “You should call her. She knows everything there is to know about that.” As Fella would say (about his self), “I don’t have quite that intense of a personality for such things.” Which is, of course, a load (his “things” are: old cars, architecture, history and politics, and geography--or perhaps more accurately cartography). His things he can speak on with authority.

So what is it that I would like to speak with authority on?

The smartass in me answers, “What wouldn’t I?!” Which, really, is just another diversion tactic from answering the question.

So here goes nothing: I’d like to possess mad cake decorating skills.

All that lead-in blather for that?! I know, I was hoping for something loftier myself, but that’s what I came up with.

Is there anything you can do to gain that skill?
There’s plenty I can do. There are Wilton® classes at craft stores. And there’s always the culinary program at DVC. To name a couple.

Why haven't you done it?
Why, time, why else! The constraint of time is the bane of my existence. It was the basis of my conversation with my checker at Trader Joe’s on Sunday, who, after awhile conceded defeat to my schedule, just as I seem to have.

I should make time, I know. And someday I will. Right after I do all the other things that make up this Jill’s life right now.

Oy.