Learning curve

The concept of a learning curve applies to relationships and I don't think I ever realized that before.  As usual, there's a story behind this recognition.

We fished Friday evening and K landed seven and kept two.  The other five had started showing effects of their migration process, which tends to make the meat less tasty.  I, on the other hand, kept getting skunked by those smart fish ~ I lost track of how much bait they stole.  But here's a secret:  I actually sometimes like to just watch K because of how relaxed he looks when he's focused, so I was happy with our evening.

Today I built an insulator for K's smoker.  The weather has turned a bit, and so to help the smoking process along, we needed to make sure the smoker stays as warm as possible.  In my married life, when I contemplated any projects around the house, part of my analysis in the planning stage was making sure I thought through as much as possible because I just didn't want to deal with additional comments or "insights" from the ex...and I didn't want to hear complaints when I was finished with the project.  While I was at the hardware store this morning, I started to get a bit of that stress factor going on.

Then I stopped.  K is generally relaxed about pretty much everything.  He knows life isn't perfect and it's wasted energy trying to make things "perfect."  As someone who works seven days a week, he's also generally thankful when I do things for him (although he says he typically doesn't let anyone do anything for him).  In general, he just appreciates the fact that I was willing to smoke his fish and adding the insulator project was "bonus."

So while starting to fret in the store, I realized that no matter how good or bad the project came out, K would be glad I tried.  He might point out things I could have done differently, but he wouldn't be critical of effort I extended.  For some reason, I realized when I completed the project that I was generally more relaxed going about it than I would have been three or four years ago.  I just rolled with it.

Guess what.  It came out better than I expected.  It doesn't match the "perfect" image in my head, but it looks a lot better than I thought it would.  Being relaxed about the whole thing made it a lot easier in general, which is what I think made it come out pretty decently.  I, of course, thought about the "why" of it all.  Ultimately, I sent K a text thanking him for unknowingly teaching me another lesson today:  not overthinking/stressing/worrying about stuff sometimes makes things easier...and better.