The Can't List

"I can't do that."

It's starting to dawn on me how often I've said this in my life. Heck, I remember having an entire defense of the words "I can't" planned out. I think it centered around the idea that if I tried something and then said, "I can't do this," then I was giving myself permission to fail instead of holding up an impossible standard of completion I would certainly fall short of. That permission, in itself, sometimes allowed me to keep inching forward, since I had my own assurance that I wouldn't beat myself up if I failed.

But clearly, at some point along the road, I let "I can't" go from being permission-to-fail to permission-not-to-try.

"I can't play video games."

Maybe this is an odd one to start with, but it was one of the first ones that broke through to me and made me realize how much I denied myself.

I don't much regret that I didn't have videogames as a kid, since I had tons of books. The only videogame exposure I got was host families' kids loaning me their gameboy for a few minutes, a couple months loan of a 3DS Zelda game, a few flash games online, and Super Mario Bros on college friends' systems. I got it in my head that all video games were like Super Mario Bros, requiring twitchy fingers and perfect timing, or some memorized combination of button mashing to win. I died so many times playing Super Mario Bros that a friend of mine who was watching funneled lives over just to see how long it would take me to get out of the starting area. Spoiler: I never did.

"Don't jump on the spiky goombas, Dusty!"

"How was I supposed to know that when you're supposed to jump on the other types???"

Portal was the first Steam game I bought and played... on my laptop. With my trackpad. Later, I had to be informed by my boyfriend that trying to play Portal with a trackpad would only bring me despair. He gladly donated a mouse to the cause, and I found that I loved the game.

This was followed by Undertale. Within a few years, I played my first controller game on the Switch: Legend of Zelda, Breath Of The Wild. Around this time it finally hit me; I absolutely can play videogames. It's all about what kind of game I pick.

I still hate most platformers, and I have no interest in shooters with no plot or purely tactical games. However, story-rich, explorative, choice-based games with a few puzzle elements are my jam. Crafting elements are cool too, as long as that's not the main point to the game.

By now, my husband is running out of good games to recommend to me. Apparently I've been through all the good classics that can be found on Steam or Switch. Considering how lousy I was at Super Mario Bros, it feels pretty good that I can down any dragon in Skyrim.

"I can't be a decent housewife."

The mental image of the fifties housewife hung over my head like a keenly polished sword of Damocles. She seemed like Superwoman. She had her makeup done before her feet hit the ground, wore heels around the house, and cooked three meals a day while vacuuming with her free hand. She always had time for the kids and a pie in the oven in case a neighbor poked their head in. And somewhere in all that mess she could organize bake sales or food drives at the drop of a hat while planning a birthday/Christmas/block party. Laundry? Done. Scrapes? Bandaged. Floor? Swept and mopped. Furniture? Polished. Kids? Corralled and properly directed. All without a hair out of place or a stain on the dress.

So the myth goes.

The time: Before Marriage. I was working various customer service positions most of the day. Being an introvert, this drained most of my energy. By the time I got home, I had little fuel in the tank and no motivation. Whatever dwelling I had reflected this state. I would slap together a deli-meat-and-bread sandwich--or cooked spaghetti if I had a little extra energy--and withdrew from the world to roleplay or write fanfiction. The sink was dealt with when I didn't have any clean dishes left, and by then it was a biohazard that smelled to high heaven. I couldn't see how I could ever keep a household in decent order when I couldn't bring myself to care.

The time: Now. Sergey relieved me of the need to hold down a job, and we opted not to have kids. These decisions gave me space to recoup my internal resources and work on managing everything else.

Together we built a recipe book of our own, things we tweaked to our specifications until we loved the result, or recipes we begged off people who made delicious dishes. Having a dishwasher cuts my cooking efforts by at least 40%. Because of our food regimen, we only eat one main meal a day and we don't eat home-cooked meals all the time, so with all that, cooking doesn't take all my energy. All that told, I found that I enjoy cooking, and baking treats for neighbors became my way of spreading goodwill and smoothing relations when needed.

Over time, I began to mirror Sergey's need for a more clean and orderly environment, negotiating with him and learning to see the things that bothered him. Over time, it sank in to me that my own mental state lightened and cleared up the more ordered my surroundings were. Let's be real, I'll never enjoy cleaning, but I absolutely adore the results of having cleaned.

While I'm not down for doing a full top-to-bottom house cleaning every day, I've figured out how to manage my available time and energy to keep the house in decent shape. Yes, the books have dust on them and yes, the spiders and I have an understanding that they can congregate on the ceiling decorations for a few months at a time, but the sink is empty. The floor isn't sticky. Surfaces get cleaned/vacuumed/swept/mopped/scrubbed about once a week. I have a good idea of what supplies need to be ordered or picked up at the grocery store. I know where all the dishes and implements go. The laundry cycles in and out as needed, even if it takes me a few days to fold clean loads. I have Fastmail email me reminders for things that need semi-annual maintenance.

In short, I can keep a house in order. And, a step beyond that,

"I can't decorate or head repairs on a house."

When Sergey and I moved to the new house he'd bought with his best friend in Houston, we got hit with the full impact of The Situation. We knew the house had been neglected for 40+ years, but we hadn't yet lived with those problems. The list of urgently needed repairs would take up a blog post all on its own. Yet, because I didn't bring any money to the table, I didn't touch anything for a full year. I felt that I wasn't an owner in any way, so I didn't have the right to make changes.

After several conversations and reassurances by my husband and his best friend that they wanted my help and input, I began decorating. A few whimsical things like plastic ivy strung all over the kitchen ceiling and walls. Acrylic birds and butterflies hung from the ceiling by invisible string. A set of incredibly ugly spiral stairs painted to look like mossy stone steps. Encouraged, I took the ugliest room in the house where I couldn't possibly make anything worse and repainted the walls, replaced a toilet seat and the blinds, and added a rug, a shower curtain, and a couple pieces of sink decor.

And then I spread out. I attacked rooms where I knew I could make a positive difference and painted over half of the walls in the house myself. I even took an upstairs guest room and turned the walls into a star-studded galaxy. I hung little ceramic lizards and fish all over the house.

Any walls that were too tall or weirdly placed for me to safely paint, I turned over to professionals. Shopping for a quote is a learned skill, and I learned it and found a few good names and numbers. Turns out, those guys often do home repair as well, so I engaged our painters to fix many issues. When they got too busy to come reliably, I found another contractor to work with, as well as an incredible plumber to handle our tricky plumbing issues.

Four years. I still may not know how to talk shop with the contractors at their level, but at this point I can spot a problem in development and point it out to professionals. I know who to call. The house is fully functional and keeps out all... okay, most of the water. We just found another leak I have to deal with...

And the upshot of all this is that when visitors walk in, they get the sense of whimsy I was hoping for. Some of Sergey's friends have told him that they wish their wives would let them decorate like this.

Huh, and here I thought I was the lucky one getting to decorate how I wanted.

I'm a Housewife. I'm a good Housewife. I may not be dealing with five children, two vacuums, and three phones all at once, but I'm managing pretty well as long as I ration my energy usage and keep reasonable to-do lists. Who'd'a'thunk.

"I can't lose weight."

This will be its own post someday. Suffice it to say, I absolutely can and have, but it took many years, the right accountability partner, and a lot of permanent eating and exercise life-changes. It had absolutely nothing to do with "diets".

"I can't go on multi-hour hikes."

I once said this to Sergey when he described a beautiful hike in Yellowstone called Mist Trail. It passes by a waterfall and it sounded gorgeous, but it's a hike of several hours. At that point in time, even a 45 minute walk on paved roads was rough on my body. I couldn't imagine spending 4 hours hiking trails with inclines.

After several years of slowly losing weight and gradually amping up exercise, Sergey, two of his friends, and I took a hiking trip in Canada. We hiked for 3 or 4 days, every day. The longest hike was 7 hours, and I kept up perfectly. I was elated. Ecstatic. I actually liked hiking!

When we got back to Houston, we found a 4-5 hour trail that we hiked once a week until it got too hot to handle. By now, my calves feel like rocks when I poke them. My high-school self would not believe any of this.

"I can't understand non-fiction."

My early reading was almost exclusively fiction-based and I inhaled every novel that came within reach. Repeatedly. Fiction had intense, colorful visuals that non-fiction lacked. I couldn't form pictures in my mind of the concepts non-fiction books were laying out, so it didn't compute. I thought, for a long time, either I was too stupid to understand non-fiction or it was just too boring to care about.

Enter Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell, who laid out a topic I thought I couldn't possibly care for in such a way that I clearly understood a good 80% of the book. And that blew open a door for me. I began to snatch up non-fiction titles more often than fiction titles for the first time in my life. As much as I dislike some of Amazon's policies, Audible has been a Godsend in this arena, as I discovered I can process non-fiction more easily through my ears than my eyes.

The more I read, the more I felt I was learning, and the more I realized I actually liked learning when it's something I'm interested in. Which leads to,

"I can't learn a new language."

In brief, I told myself I couldn't learn a new language because it would be hard. I didn't want to spend energy on something I wasn't going to need or use all the time, what was the point? Besides, it's hard enough picking apart all the ways people misunderstand each other in my native language, wouldn't dealing with that take my whole life? There's just no point--

Shumatsu wa do deshita ka. Pizza o tabemashita, hon o yomimashita, eega o mimashita. What did you do this weekend? I ate pizza, I read books, I watched movies.

Kochira wa Arkservers no Sergey-san desu. Sergey-san wa Amerika-jin desu. (business intro) This is Sergey of Arkservers. Sergey is from America/is American.

Mizu to gohan kudasai! Water and rice please!

I did not look at my notes when typing these.

I was skeptical when Sergey expressed shock at how fast I memorized the first batch of vocabulary words. It had to be a fluke. When the second lesson came and went the same way, I was a little shaken, but still convinced it was going to get harder.

Now, four lessons and a few hours of dedicated Duolingo work later, I know it's going to get harder, but I am convinced that learning Japanese is well within my grasp. I am memorizing fast, retaining well, and practicing is actually fun. It's the same kind of soaking in I did when I first realized I could understand non-fiction and that I wanted to learn. I want to spend time on this, I want to get it right, I want more.

"I can't write a novel."

I won't spend too long on this one. If you've followed this blog for any length of time, or known me at all, you know I've struggled with writing since I was a teenager and you know most of the reasons why.

For the first time, I feel like a full novel manuscript is possible. And I mean that I felt that for the first time quite recently.

As I said recently, I finished Remara and the Book Thief arc, then took a break. For the past few days I've been working on Remara's origins and brainstorming them with Sergey. As we discussed the situation and what she could be, suddenly the purpose of the story came crashing together like two cymbals at the end of a grand symphony. For the first time, this was no longer a blind wandering in the desert, hoping for some string to tie this all together. For the first time, I see that this is actually a novel with a purpose and an overarching narrative.

And finishing a first draft even seems feasible, if not this year, then not long after this year is over.

I. Can. Write. A. Novel.

"I can't...?"

I'm sure there are some things I truly can't do. I can't deal with complex maths, but let's be fair; I hate them. I don't want to do this. Math makes me miserable. I think it's okay to let that category of "I can't" go.

Handling finances? Could if I absolutely had to, but I'd prefer not to unless there's no other option.

I can't bench press 200 lbs. Yeah, fair, that's probably not safe to try right now, but I could probably get to... maybe 30-50? With work. And I'd like to, because I'm tired of having noodle arms.

At this point, I'm not sure what else that I've been telling myself "I can't" that I actually can do. The thing is, now when those words come out of my mouth, I pause. Do a double-take. Wonder if that's actually true, or if I've just been telling myself that because I don't want to try and fail.

Lately I begin to wonder, what else am I good at?