swimming – Karen Creamer Author, Coach, Speaker

When I turned 50 this year, I decided to try to do things for the first time, since this is my first year in a new decade. Today, I went swimming at the beach all by myself.

This is no small undertaking, to which anyone who wears glasses and is severely myopic will attest. The problem is this: what to do with the glasses? Leave them on, and risk losing them to the ocean, or leave them in a bag with your stuff on your chair, and risk losing yourself?

If I go swimming at the beach with others (who, you know, can see), they can guide me back to our place in the sand, no problem. When faced with the prospect of trying to find my way back without guidance, I have always balked, then caved. In other words, I’ve never done it.

Until today. I brought my red canvas bag, hoping that I would be able to detect the bright color, if nothing else, when it was time to leave the water and find my stuff. I put my chair right at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the parking lot. I walked in a straight line to the ocean, which was at medium-low (not low-low) tide, so I didn’t have to go too far to get back to square one. I hoped for the best.

My Plan B was this: to depend on the kindness of strangers. “Excuse me, but I’m lost…” wouldn’t sound very convincing coming from the mouth of a 50-year-old, so I fervently hoped I wouldn’t have to go this route.

I am happy to report that I didn’t! I swam in the ocean for 20 minutes, came out (just to prove to myself that I could find my stuff–and to get away from the teenage boy who wouldn’t stop taunting his sister with talk about the sharks getting us), then went back in for another 20 minutes.

Life was good today.

In the interest of getting out of my rut, my husband and I went away…to the other side of town.

One of the perks was that the facility had a pool. No big whoop for me, because I don’t much like chlorinated pools. My husband does though, so even though it was late (9:30pm is late when you are usually in bed by then), and even though it was freezing out, and even though it was snowing out, and even though we had to walk outside (the equivalent of about 3 blocks, maybe, but still) to get to said pool, and even though I had to put on a bathing suit in February…I went with him.

I took swimming lessons when I was 12, but it never clicked for me. I was always awkward in the water, so do not consider myself a swimmer.

My husband is a great swimmer.

I had planned to sit on the side of the pool and watch him, but he convinced me to swim a little…and guess what?

I swam the length of the pool 3 times! I enjoyed it! I wanted to stay longer! I didn’t even mind the walk back to the room!

Go figure. Maybe there are things that you can do but haven’t you haven’t tried because you keep telling yourself that you can’t.

What if you can?