raybear | You don't have to prove to me you're beautiful to strangers, I've got loving eyes of my own.

I just went swimming and didn't die. I mean, obviously. Unless I found a way to uplink to my livejournal from beyond the grave, which, you know, I wouldn't put it past me.

DYA gave me some pointers, general overview on freestyle, breaststroke and backstroke. I'm sure I'll need a recap on everything, since I tend to get overwhelmed when learning something from scratch. Which, I mean, she wasn't completely teaching me how to swim -- I know how to float, tread water, go under water and swim around the way you do as a 8 year old in the pool. I just never really got beyond that. I don't know how to dive or anything remotely complicated. Today I tried to focus on just two main aspects: breathing at the right time while turning my head, and kicking. Kicking for some reason is not working. Like it feels completely unnatural, no matter how I contort my body. The thing with swimming is that it's harder for me mentally isolate one aspect while doing it, at least not untill I can relax the panic button that starts to go off when my body sinks into the water. I need to literally isolate each part, learn one part well, than the other parts will hopefully fall into place. But while I got tired, I never got so frustrated that I was unhappy. I'm getting a lot better at being okay with being new at something. Such a basic lesson to learn, but when you're hard on yourself for not getting something right, and you want to stop, but then you do it, so you're hard on yourself for being hard on yourself....it's a vicious, silly cycle.

And while I was a little self-conscious about my body at times, for the most part, I felt remarkably comfortable being in public in mere swim trunks. I was more self-conscious about the scars than my belly, but even that was fairly mild. Mostly I was just happy to look down while doing a backstroke and see my naked torso.

I'm pretty tired right now, but not so tired to keep me from taking the bike for a spin to put air in the tires and maybe ride her down to teaching tonight.