Not So Great Icepectations

I hate being wrong. And it seems like it's so often that I am. At the moment of realization it's especially bad. That light bulb goes off and I figure it out, and for a moment there's an embarrassing clarity. I think it's a hard lesson for me to learn that people aren't going to act how I expect them to act. Everyone is coming from a different place and has different modes of operation. So I shouldn't get upset when someone doesn't conform to my own ways of doing things. I guess someone I know is right when he keeps mentioning "managing expectations". When it comes to other people, they're going to do whatever they're going to do and I can either deal with it or not.
I don't know why it's such a big deal. I kind of live my life on doing what I want to and not expecting other people judge me for it. I get mad when people hold me to some kind of standard of how I should act. But still, there I am, doing it other people and thinking nothing of it. Double standard. Hypocrite. The old "I just expected more from you". But there are no excuses.
I guess the only person I can have expectations for is myself. I think I've spent a long time expecting nothing from myself and everything from everyone else. It's probably just a way to keep from doing the harder of the two.
Which brings me to ice skating. Ice skating. I decided to take ice skating lessons. I'm in the pre-Alpha A class. It's not even Alpha, it's before that. I started a few weeks ago and felt somewhat comfortable skating around as other wobbled around me. But then things got harder. I realized that after I struggled, I was much less excited to go to class. I think part of me only wanted to go if I knew I could excel and once things got hard I didn't expect to do any better and I just wanted to give up. But I went anyway (mostly because I have this thing about missing classes). We were doing crossovers, which I couldn't do last week to save my life. But I skated and skated around in our little circle at the end of the ice rink. And after a few minutes, it clicked in. I was doing crossovers. They weren't pretty but it was a start. I was ready to give up a week before because I didn't expect to do it, and there I was crossing over.
I think I've lived my life taking my expectations for myself and thrusting them on to other people. I've stayed small-time because it's safe while others around me took chances. I hope one day I can stop expecting so much from everyone else and so much more from myself.