A Ride on the Gloom Train

It’s been a hard week in this Typist’s world. My place of work was hit with a massive, shocking round of layoffs and the gloom has been palpable, I had a terrible time in my second firearms class and now I’m really discouraged, and I’ve been generally moping around all week, lamenting the fact that nothing has ever come naturally to me and that I’ve always had to work really hard to learn anything. Yep, I’m a real party on wheels this week.

I was hoping that when I returned to the range for the second class, somehow all of my nerves would have magically melted away. I thought that because that I was over the hurdle of having fired my first gun, I’d be able to get the trembling and flinching under control and Have Confidence. It didn’t happen that way at all. In fact, it got progressively worse over the course of the class; so bad in fact, that the instructors seemed worried that I would misfire to the point that it was a safety issue. As the class went on, I got more and more flustered and anxious, and flustered and anxious are not good states of mind when handling a firearm. I really wanted to be good at it, but I was worse than I was even in the first class. The sound was unbearably upsetting to my ears and once the adrenaline flooded my system, I couldn’t stop shaking. And everything was going way too fast in the class and I couldn’t concentrate. I have never done well in situations where things are moving too quickly for me to keep up with, which, as it turns out, are a lot of situations, but especially one in which I am handling a tool that creates a colossal  explosion at the end of my hands. And I understand it’s not a competition, but my self-esteem was not helped by the fact that Mr. Typist was the best shot in the class and has since taken to shooting like a fish to water.

The only thing that made me feel slightly better was a conversation afterwards with a  lady named Martha, who was an instructor that day and co-owns the range with her husband John, the gentlemen who held my hand on my first shot the week before. She is truly one of the most authentic, kind and humble people I have ever met. She’s been shooting since college and has had to overcome numerous hurdles, including a bad car accident that caused head trauma and made being in the range physically unbearable for a period of time. She explained to me that my response was completely logical from a biological perspective, that she was very empathic towards my struggle, and that I should be proud that I stuck with it during the class. She said that everyone comes to shooting from a different place in life, and that it’s important to be accepting of where everyone is starting from. She was really positive and kind. It meant a lot to me that she took the time to talk to me and encourage me to stick out.

Maybe I am just feeling weakened and emotionally battered this week because of all of the loss at work, but right now, I am feeling like I don’t have the will to stick it out and do all of the hard work involved in getting proficient. A part of me wants to give up. A part of me is not sure that this is where I want to invest my ever-waning will and energy.  I have enough challenges. More and more, in my off-work time, I only want to do things that are fun and easy, and I find shooting to be the opposite. It’s going to be a lot of hard work for me to get anywhere near competent, and I just don’t feel up to it right now.

But, thanks in large part to Martha, I’m not ready to completely give up yet, either. I’ve been watching lots of videos on the “flinch phenomenon” and trying to come up with ways that I can desensitize myself, while being fully aware that I may simply be physically and psychically unsuited to this. I’ve made it through nearly fifty years of life without touching a firearm, so it’s not like it’s essential to my existence.

Sorry to be a sucking bundle of gloom this week. Let’s go out on something sweet, gently and easy: