Dare to fail!

Ok, stay calm. Relax. Go with it. Breathe, for goodness sake. I can do this. Go. Don’t think about, just take a deep breath and gó.

I. Can. Do. This.

Recognize this speech? It’s the peptalkspeech I say to myself all the time. Do you have a peptalk for yourself too?

Life is full of chances, risks and challenges. And to achieve all those things, you have to try to be the winning team. Always go for more, peptalk yourself, go for the gold. Never quit. Believe in yourself.

I believe in myself.

But yesterday*, I failed. And I was so mad at myself, so pissed and incredibly disappointed. Really, am I quitting?! Yes, I was.

My name is Sabrina and I quit diving.

My hubs and I are in Egypt as I’m writing this.

We’ve been here a couple of times before, so we’ve seen some things. Snorkeling in the Blue Hole (that’s like swimming in Finding Nemo), riding camels, meeting Bedouines, a jeepsafari in the desert.

Me, on a camel in the desert in 2008. Ain't I charming.

Disaster dive

So we went diving in Egypt. It wasn’t my idea, but after seeing so much in Egypt, this was one of the things left. Let’s try!

We got picked up at the hotel and survived a ride in a small bus with too many people in it, in the Egyptian traffic (the rules? There are no rules. Like our travel agent said, it makes calling while driving a lot easier. I like to close my eyes in those busses).

At the diving center, we signed a contract saying nobody there would be responsible for my death, and we got a wetsuit and flippers. The rest would be on board. Everything went in Egyptian style. Very slow and very unefficient.

When we finally got on the boat, we met Alladin, who’d be our dive instructor that day. Yep, his name is Alladin!

So here we are and Alladin shows us the tank. How to breathe, what to do, what not to do, the signs. It seemed very simple, just breathe through your mouth.

I can do that.

He’ll do the rest, he says. He shows two buttons he’ll press. One for going up, and one for going down. “If you want to sit on the sand, you only sit like this.” (imagine a Arabic accent). He shows a position on his knees.

The sand? Like, in the bottom? As if I’m going to the bottom, are you out of your mind?!

“If you have a problem, do this (he does a horizontal jazz hand next to his face) and show me where the problem is.”

Problem? What problem?