The talent or skill you wish you had, and whether you have actually tried to learn it

[SkyHunter]

An honest thread about our unbuilt selves. Name the talent or skill you genuinely wish you had, the thing you watch others do with a pang of envy, and then answer the harder half honestly, have you ACTUALLY tried to learn it, or is it a fantasy you protect by never testing against reality

The distinction matters because there are two very different wishes hiding in this thread, the skill you have earnestly attempted and found hard, which is real and respectable, and the one you have admired for years while doing precisely nothing about, which is usually less about ability and more about the comfort of an untried dream

There is a gentle truth underneath, many of the talents we envy are mostly just hours nobody saw, the effortless musician practised alone for a decade, the fluent speaker drilled through hundreds of dull sessions, and the word talent often hides the unglamorous labour that actually produced it

So tell us the skill you covet and the honest state of your attempts, and if the answer is you have never tried, the friendly question is why, because half the time the untried dream is more comfortable as a wish than it would be as a lumpy frustrating beginner reality, and admitting that is the start of either learning it or letting it go

[TheLegendJohn32]

Wish I could play piano, have I tried, no, and reading the opening post I finally see why, the fantasy of being able to play is more comfortable than the reality of being bad at scales for a year, called out completely

[GoldbergFan_X]

The untried dream being more comfortable than beginner reality is uncomfortably accurate, we protect the wish by never risking the clumsy start, the fantasy stays perfect only while untested

[VioletBarrel]

Genuinely tried to draw for two years and I am still mediocre and I love it, this is the respectable version, the wish met reality and reality was hard and worth it anyway

[MayanHan]

That is the honest path and it deserves more credit than the fantasy, mediocre at a thing you attempted beats perfect at a thing you only imagined every time

[TheRizz]

Envied fluent second language speakers for years, then actually started, and the it is just hidden hours truth hit hard, there was no talent to envy, only sessions I had not done, so I started doing them

[DistantSequence]

The talent is hidden hours point should be printed at the top of every skill I ever envied, the effortless people are just the ones whose effort I did not witness

[Quarry92]

Wish I could sing, have not tried beyond the car, and honestly it might be the one to leave as a happy fantasy, not every wish needs to become a project, some are fine as daydreams

[Dylan]

That is a mature take, letting a wish stay a wish on purpose is different from avoiding it through fear, knowing which is which is the actual skill

[DeepPilot]

Woodworking for me, tried it, terrible at it, kept going, and the surprise was the joy is in the doing not the being good, envy assumes the payoff is competence when often it is just the hours themselves

[KaiHeck]

The thread splits cleanly into people who tried and grew and people who admired and avoided, and nobody who tried regrets it while everybody who only admired is a little wistful, make of that what you will