@FayGoneAstray, here are the things I'm noticing in your post above.
Speed and skill and mileage
According to my husband I ski much slower than my ability. My husband said this year he noticed I'm picking up confidence and going faster and improving.
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It sounds like your husband, like many recreational skiers, equates speed with skill. Sure, people with more skill may often go fast. But that does not mean people who go fast have more skill. It sounds like your husband thinks if you gain confidence somehow, then you'll go faster and therefore your skill will improve. This is not true. Skill comes from doing things that work. That requires knowing technically what to do, and working on getting your resistant body to do those good technical things regularly enough so that they become a new habit, replacing the old. Learning to do new skills properly has to be learned on low pitch terrain and slow speeds with a lot of repetition. No one can focus on doing new movements when they are intimidated, so slowness and low pitch are essential for learning. Your husband does not know this.
Practice makes perfect; mileage builds skills
...this last season I skied the most with my pass and my husband said he noticed.
Your husband also sounds like he may believe that mileage will make a person a better skier. This is not necessarily true; practice does not make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect. It's clearly time for some lessons, with a real instructor, one who knows how to teach novice adults. The longer you wait to get good instruction, the more difficult it will be to replace technically bad habits with technically good ones. The bad ones will get embedded even deeper. Deeply embedded habits will assert themselves when you try to do something new and better, interrupting and subverting your learning.
Insecurity about getting out of control
I get insecure about getting out of control and if I start going faster. I like to slow myself down.
Good! Your inbuilt sense of self-preservation is at work. If your skill set is inadequate to keep you in control at speed, then you
need to slow down. There are technically good ways, and technically bad ways, to slow down. If it
Using friction to slow down
...so I work my legs really hard as I"m fighting gravity a bit. As a result I often feel like my legs are getting tired - that I'm doing a non stop squat.
This is the bad way to slow down. If it feels like you
are doing a non-stop squat, then you are. Using your edged skis to scrape forcefully against the snow to slow you down will wear you out. No amount of strength and endurance will fix this. Good technique will fix it. You need to learn good technical ways to slow down that don't use scraping against the snow. Turns should not be linked hockey-stops.
Fatigue
To add I'm in decent shape - I run regularly I tell my huband it's easier for me to run 10km than go down a steeper slope for 5 minutes.
See above.
Back seat
I think I have issues being in the correct position on my skis. I sit in the back seat - especially on steeper or more difficult terrain. I feel like my turn technique and body position need correcting.
Skiing in the back seat is like doing continuous wall-sits. It's tiring. And it eliminates your ability to use the front half of your skis to start your turns. That's an essential skill. You need an instructor to help you get out of the back seat. There are techniques for teaching this. You need lots of practice on unintimidating terrain, at slow speeds, under a watchful eye of an instructor, where there are no crowds.
Unsure about turn technique
I feel like my turn technique and body position need correcting. This was only third season? (and my first season with a season's pass) after twenty something years off (and I never did ski school when I learned).
Yes, you need instruction to learn good technique. It doesn't come naturally, nor does it come from mileage, nor from confidence, nor from speed. Good technique can keep you as slow as you want on any terrain, and it can give you that sense of control that everyone wants to have. If you can go slow, you can go fast. Why? Because you know you can slow down at any time. Learning to go slow is the key to confidence and the entryway to skill-building. Imagine if you could go down a field of big moguls, one mogul at a time, stopping after each one. That would be sloooow. Your confidence in those moguls would rise phenomenally. Same thing on steeps, on ice, and on any groomer in any condition. Go slow first, to learn to go fast later.
Hate for skiing on ice
I hate skiing on ice...
This is a skill you can learn. In this case, the type of ski you use matters on ice. You need narrow skis (waist below 80), with stiff torsional flex, little rocker, and sharp edges. And you need good technique. Otherwise, it's OK to stay off the ice.
Panic in zero visibility
I panic when I can't see ahead of me. This would be the same in a dark room or a ski hill... I feel physically ill. But this often isn't much of a regular problem. This is zero visibility conditions.
We all want to see where we are going. Blind skiers need a coach speaking to them as they ski. If we don't worry about zero visibility, there's something faulty about our sense of self-preservation.
Desire for control & worry over the risks; concern that this is a bad attitude
I'm generally a person who likes to feel in control and I'm cautious, risk averse and a worrier by nature. So not the greatest attributes for a skier getting back into it after over tweny , or twenty-five years off!
Wanting to ski in control is a good thing. Concern over the risks inherent in skiing is valid. People do get hurt. You need good technique to ski in control and safely. So take lessons. Not a lesson, lessons.
Love for groomers, fear/hate of high moguls, steeps, and ice
I love groomers and I'm not comfortable in deep powder.. But there was one day this past season with some fresh powder that wasn't so deep I could go through it but it slowed me slightly and I loved it! I hate high moguls and I"m afraid of steeps and hitting ice.
Not knowing how to ski unfamiliar conditions will produce caution in any intelligent person. Take lessons.
Am I too blunt? I hope not. This has been a very busy day for me and I wanted to get this all written before I turn in. Best of luck with your upcoming season!
