Hello Divas,
I just found this great forum yesterday and am hoping someone can empathize with my recent experience. Sorry that this first post is such a long one – it felt a bit cathartic to write.
Background note: I have a lot of social anxiety-related hangups around skiing. I grew up in ski country, but I come from a largely blue-collar family, where the winter pursuits are more likely to be ice fishing or snowmobiling. We did a lot of XC as kids, in phys ed class and so on, but I didn’t get on a pair of alpine skis until my early teens – the absolute worst possible time to start, when your psyche is just a ball of hormones and anxiety. In fact, I had such a horrific day that first time I put the skis on that I didn’t go anywhere near the mountain again until my early 20s. The best skiers around school and my community were by far most often the kids from the wealthiest families. Though my logical brain is well aware this is a generalization – there are great skiers in my own family -- I feel like my lack of skiing ability is a “tell” about my social class and that everyone can read it. (My closest friends with whom I grew up are a mix of ongoing ski lovers, kid skiers who gave it up as adults, and people who never took it up in the first place – and none of them has anything like the hangups I do about this.)
But I want to enjoy skiing on my own terms. I have dabbled, and that is definitely the operative term, in skiing most of my adult life – once or twice a winter, a few lessons here and there in my 20s -- but my logical brain knows full well that my time or resource commitment has not been sufficient to improve, especially because I am not really a natural athlete and I do have a lot of physical fear to overcome. (That said, I went to college with all kinds of kids from “the tri-state area” who apparently somehow learned to be brilliant skiers by doing just what I described, a couple of trips to the mountain each winter. How? How did they do it??? It was always hard to explain to these people why I was not a skier. I dreaded having to do it every time. I’ve come up with all kinds of quarter-century-too-late staircase wit I could have used at age 18, like “Does everyone in Hawaii surf?”)
I lived away from my home state until about four years ago, and when I moved back, I certainly had in mind to ski more. Winters are long here, and getting outside and going up the mountain feels so good. I went out twice this week. Once with my mom, my favorite ski buddy -- we stick to the green trails and have a good time. This has really been all I aspired to for the past few years. My equipment is not very up to date (though addressing this is a priority) and so on.
Unfortunately the outing with Mom lulled me into a false sense of security and I agreed to tag along with colleagues on a ski morning later in the same week. I think the colleague who organized the outing did not understand my explanations that I am not a strong skier, and when I think about that I understand why, because here in a ski-crazy state that could mean anything from “bunny hill preferred” to “I don’t do double black mogul runs but anything else is cool!” Anyway, it was a disaster. It started out OK as we did a green warmup and a blue that I handled OK (though bringing up the rear), but then I was dragged up a second blue trail with VERY variable conditions, and froze halfway down. The one saving grace is that with encouragement from a friendly ski patroller, I very slowly side-slipped my way down and made it to the bottom. Any attempt at correct technique went completely out the window. He had offered at one point to call for the sled, but I am 100% positive that if I had accepted that offer, I would have gotten to the bottom, politely thanked the ski patrol, put my skis in the car, driven home and given up alpine skiing completely for the rest of my life.
I’m now so humiliated that I don’t feel much like interacting with any of my colleagues today, especially the one who organized this outing. If I had it to do over again, I would have asserted myself more and split off from the group earlier, but my colleague was so cheery and insistent that we should all stick together -- and again, I’m pretty sure she didn’t entirely understand my limitations. I sought her out to apologize for yesterday’s mess, and she was kind and apologetic herself -- but I know she now thinks I am a crap athlete and feels sorry for me, and it makes me feel so lousy and left out that I wish I’d never agreed to go with them (my other colleague who protested that she’s “not a strong skier” is really not too bad at all, and I just overheard them enthusing about the runs they did after I went home). I am in my mid-40s, but I felt like a 5-year-old on the mountain yesterday. I’m sitting in my office on my lunch break writing this and trying not to cry, it was so awful. I can’t ever put this back in the box, and the colleagues on this outing with me yesterday will never look at me the same way or vice versa.
How do I figure out how to get better at this sport, gain confidence, and comfortably enjoy it ON MY OWN TERMS (instead of to impress or “stay in line” with other people who I think expect it from me) without constantly feeling like the working-class kid who always got picked toward the end of the line in gym class? Logically I know it will just have to involve a lot of skiing on my own and some private instruction, but I’m even nervous about approaching the latter because if I don’t find an instructor who “gets it,” the lesson could turn into the same kind of nightmare I experienced yesterday.
Any thoughts/reassurances/advice? Books or other content that address skier psyche/anxiety, and possibly particularly in these terms? I feel like this question of social class and how it affects the ski learning experience is a bit of the elephant in the room -- I can’t imagine I’m the only person to have ever felt this way.
I just found this great forum yesterday and am hoping someone can empathize with my recent experience. Sorry that this first post is such a long one – it felt a bit cathartic to write.
Background note: I have a lot of social anxiety-related hangups around skiing. I grew up in ski country, but I come from a largely blue-collar family, where the winter pursuits are more likely to be ice fishing or snowmobiling. We did a lot of XC as kids, in phys ed class and so on, but I didn’t get on a pair of alpine skis until my early teens – the absolute worst possible time to start, when your psyche is just a ball of hormones and anxiety. In fact, I had such a horrific day that first time I put the skis on that I didn’t go anywhere near the mountain again until my early 20s. The best skiers around school and my community were by far most often the kids from the wealthiest families. Though my logical brain is well aware this is a generalization – there are great skiers in my own family -- I feel like my lack of skiing ability is a “tell” about my social class and that everyone can read it. (My closest friends with whom I grew up are a mix of ongoing ski lovers, kid skiers who gave it up as adults, and people who never took it up in the first place – and none of them has anything like the hangups I do about this.)
But I want to enjoy skiing on my own terms. I have dabbled, and that is definitely the operative term, in skiing most of my adult life – once or twice a winter, a few lessons here and there in my 20s -- but my logical brain knows full well that my time or resource commitment has not been sufficient to improve, especially because I am not really a natural athlete and I do have a lot of physical fear to overcome. (That said, I went to college with all kinds of kids from “the tri-state area” who apparently somehow learned to be brilliant skiers by doing just what I described, a couple of trips to the mountain each winter. How? How did they do it??? It was always hard to explain to these people why I was not a skier. I dreaded having to do it every time. I’ve come up with all kinds of quarter-century-too-late staircase wit I could have used at age 18, like “Does everyone in Hawaii surf?”)
I lived away from my home state until about four years ago, and when I moved back, I certainly had in mind to ski more. Winters are long here, and getting outside and going up the mountain feels so good. I went out twice this week. Once with my mom, my favorite ski buddy -- we stick to the green trails and have a good time. This has really been all I aspired to for the past few years. My equipment is not very up to date (though addressing this is a priority) and so on.
Unfortunately the outing with Mom lulled me into a false sense of security and I agreed to tag along with colleagues on a ski morning later in the same week. I think the colleague who organized the outing did not understand my explanations that I am not a strong skier, and when I think about that I understand why, because here in a ski-crazy state that could mean anything from “bunny hill preferred” to “I don’t do double black mogul runs but anything else is cool!” Anyway, it was a disaster. It started out OK as we did a green warmup and a blue that I handled OK (though bringing up the rear), but then I was dragged up a second blue trail with VERY variable conditions, and froze halfway down. The one saving grace is that with encouragement from a friendly ski patroller, I very slowly side-slipped my way down and made it to the bottom. Any attempt at correct technique went completely out the window. He had offered at one point to call for the sled, but I am 100% positive that if I had accepted that offer, I would have gotten to the bottom, politely thanked the ski patrol, put my skis in the car, driven home and given up alpine skiing completely for the rest of my life.
I’m now so humiliated that I don’t feel much like interacting with any of my colleagues today, especially the one who organized this outing. If I had it to do over again, I would have asserted myself more and split off from the group earlier, but my colleague was so cheery and insistent that we should all stick together -- and again, I’m pretty sure she didn’t entirely understand my limitations. I sought her out to apologize for yesterday’s mess, and she was kind and apologetic herself -- but I know she now thinks I am a crap athlete and feels sorry for me, and it makes me feel so lousy and left out that I wish I’d never agreed to go with them (my other colleague who protested that she’s “not a strong skier” is really not too bad at all, and I just overheard them enthusing about the runs they did after I went home). I am in my mid-40s, but I felt like a 5-year-old on the mountain yesterday. I’m sitting in my office on my lunch break writing this and trying not to cry, it was so awful. I can’t ever put this back in the box, and the colleagues on this outing with me yesterday will never look at me the same way or vice versa.
How do I figure out how to get better at this sport, gain confidence, and comfortably enjoy it ON MY OWN TERMS (instead of to impress or “stay in line” with other people who I think expect it from me) without constantly feeling like the working-class kid who always got picked toward the end of the line in gym class? Logically I know it will just have to involve a lot of skiing on my own and some private instruction, but I’m even nervous about approaching the latter because if I don’t find an instructor who “gets it,” the lesson could turn into the same kind of nightmare I experienced yesterday.
Any thoughts/reassurances/advice? Books or other content that address skier psyche/anxiety, and possibly particularly in these terms? I feel like this question of social class and how it affects the ski learning experience is a bit of the elephant in the room -- I can’t imagine I’m the only person to have ever felt this way.