What do you do well?

EstimatingThere’s a tendency for people to focus on things that go wrong in their life, or the ways in which they’ve made a mistake. On balance though, we get more right than wrong, it’s just that a lot of the things we get right we take for granted. Or they are too small to feel like pointing out. Or we don’t want to be perceived as tooting our own horn.

Well, darn it, sometimes we have to do that because no one else will. So, I’m here to toot my own horn and encourage you to do the same. See that measuring cup of rice? The recipe called for a half-cup and I had the 1 cup scoop in my hand so I just eyeballed it. Then I thought, I wonder how close this is to right, so I poured it into the half cup. Behold. That is an excellent guess.

How about you? Tell us what you’ve done recently, even a small thing, that made you think, “Dang, I’m good.”

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17 thoughts on “What do you do well?”

  1. I’m good at estimating the cost of groceries within less than a dollar, as I did today — I wanted to buy 20 pounds worth of groceries, and clocked in at 20.19. It’s not even a matter of counting as I go — just a gut feeling, a looking at the groceries and thinking, mm, this much. And so it is.

  2. I have become an antique jewelry whisperer. After so many years in the business, I can usually tell the age of a piece within a 3 or 4 year range. I have art history studies and just handling a damn lot of old stuff to thank for this skill. Of course, all the vintage catalogs, ladies magazines and victorian manufacturing catalogs I pored over as a kid helped too.

    Oh, and I make excellent real (fermented, no vinegar) pickles.

  3. Though I am a little out of practice, I used to be good at flipping away from a channel during a commercial, and coming back right when the show was just coming out of a commercial. It’s a worthless skill, but one I cherished. 🙂

  4. Today I made a five-year-old laugh in the emergency room. He was having a severe asthma attack (tripoding and all), and I had just stuck him with a needle to try to do a blood draw (unsuccessful 🙁 ). When he was feeling a little better (ie: not gasping for air and throwing up into his breathing mask), I managed to make friends with him by pretending to be afraid of his teddy bear and hiding behind a nearby cabinet door. This was only about 10 minutes after I made him cry with the needle stick.

    My horn-toot: I can engage practically any patient, regardless of age, background, or severity of illness.

  5. I used to have a lot of coins, so I started using them at the supermarket’s self-checkout machines. I became really good at estimating how many coins would make up a dollar reaching into a bunch of random assorted coins to make a grab. I am not sure how good I am at it. Haven’t done it for a while.

  6. I can usually guess, within ten minutes, what time it is when I’m working outside, where I never wear a watch — no matter how long I’ve been out working. Drives the spouse batty. 🙂

  7. Hi Mary,

    It’s Maggie =). I just read about your Asimov’s sale. Congratulations!!!

    I would like you to meet my fantabulous friend, Christopher Reynaga, whose LJ account I have temporarily taken over ;). I thought he would absolutely enjoy your journal, and I’m pointing him your way.

    (This is Chris now.) Really enjoyed your journal so far, especially the posts on reading aloud. I just graduated from Clarion West with Maggie, so that’s what I have to crow about! =) Looking forward to reading more,

    -Chris

  8. I have a pretty unerring sense of direction, which goes way back. My mother took me on a trip to Japan when I was 6, and when we were wandering the malls beneath the streets of Kyoto, she and her hostess lost me. Her hostess freaked out, but Mom was calm because she knew I would find my own way back to the hotel. Which I did. Something I perpetually do nowadays is to write down detailed instructions over the phone for how to get somewhere I’ve never been, set out later (maybe even days after) having forgotten to take the instructions, and 95 percent of the time manage to find my way to my destination — from memory and having mapped out the route spatially in my head, I guess — without having to call anybody.

  9. I love it when I manage to time everything just right. When everything just flows and I get work done, and family time, and still get to bed at a decent time. Of course that’s maybe once a week. But it’s like a symphony in motion.

  10. We have a similar super power.

    Valerie continues to be amazed at my ability to look at a pot of stuff that needs to be put away and know instantly what size container will work, and which ones won’t.

    My superhero name is Master of Volume!

  11. I’m very good at hypnotizing the Wordos Critique Table with my voice. It comes in handy during our Halloween and Winter short reading night. While I am reading, something in my voice whispers to the Wordos “when you awake, you won’t remember any of the flaws in this story.”

    I suppose that I hypnotize myself, too; but the effects wear off everybody else by the time the story is on paper and ready for a real critique.

    I guess it’s too bad I can’t send a high definition video of myself to various editors 🙂

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