She’s fine for about ten minutes. It’s a challenge so she’s game. She props herself up on her hands in the cobra pose, then on the count of whatever internal clock a five-month-old has, throws her arms out and attempts to swim through the air forward, her legs kicking feverishly.
She grunts, struggles and drools but she can’t close the two-foot gap between us.
More attempts. More drool. No progress.
What starts as a cry of effort morphs into a whine of frustration. It’s not working. I roll her to her back and she looks up at me. Daddy is upside down, that’s silly. She smiles and the frustration is gone. She’ll get it one day.
I don’t remember my attempts at crawling, first solid food or first steps. But I do wonder about the innate desire to push and grind. Have I ever put more pound-for-pound effort than I did when I learned to crawl or walk? At what point did I adopt quitting and was it because I met the end of the innate tenacity to achieve a basic level of function? Or did I develop impatience and insecurity thanks to social awareness?
It’s easy to list abilities or skills I have now that require a lot of air kicking and drool — driving a manual transmission, writing, fly fishing, docking a boat in a crosswind, explaining symbolism to freshmen.
It’s hard to confront the times I quit. I don’t think I’m a quitter and feel that I have had a wealth of experiences, but I do wonder.
Did I give up trying to tie more complex dry fly and steelhead patterns before I should have? I was often frustrated by my lack of progress in replicating the more ornate patterns and decided to just buy the prettiest ones at fly shops. That’s not a huge deal, but I have robbed myself of the satisfaction of being able to tie what I use to do what I love. My circle in that regard is incomplete. It starts with a fly shop and ends with a steelhead in hand. Had I stuck with it, I’d be good by this point, or at least tying something other than my hideous blended shrimp. I do tie some simple patterns, but my favorite ones, of course, are the pretty ones at the shop.
I wonder about other, bigger, things too. Were there times I justified, “That’s just not for me” as an excuse to not pursue something or was I making logical decisions to funnel more effort into fewer things?
I started freelance writing almost 20 years ago and kicked through rejection letters, emails and the worst response — silence. What was the problem? Was the copy poor? Did I send the email at the wrong time of day? Had the editor just read something by John Gierach which, by comparison, made me look like an infant in the writing world?
My wife and I were watching YouTube videos about farms in Alaska and one near Homer was impressive, yet took over a decade to be profitable. That’s a lot of kicking.
A business owner or creative has plenty of opportunities to second guess, especially now as it has become increasingly difficult to stand out. So is it the product or the marketing? Like it or not, online reviews and social media marketing are a necessity. It’s the modern iteration of asking around.
I suppose watching my baby struggle has made me see creatives, entrepreneurs and the general pursuit of a life worth living in a new light and I hope she never stops kicking.
• Jeff Lund is a freelance writer based in Ketchikan. His book, “A Miserable Paradise: Life in Southeast Alaska,” is available in local bookstores and at Alpha XR. “I Went to the Woods” appears twice per month in the Sports and Outdoors section of the Juneau Empire.
