You’ll never be good if you can’t stand being bad.
It feels like no one can stand to learn anymore. No one can endure being bad at something, or suffer the discomfort of being shown their areas of improvement. Folks stay locked in the imaginary world of “I’m sure I could” without experiencing the new first hand. Or they develop a callous “I don’t care” attitude toward anything outside their comfort zone. Frankly, I’m not always above that myself, and being able to drift my own car was one of those things I would rather avoid than deal with the process of being bad at it. Until this summer at least.
Yes, I’ve taken some classes in attempts to break through the anxiety of the unknown, but it’s a little different learning something with the low[er] stakes of a borrowed car. Not to mention there was some reverse luck in the low student count in my drifting classes, meaning I unintentionally ended up getting private instruction and never had to fear outside judgement.
As the miles on the Corolla racked up this year I started to realize I was getting a touch…bored? Roadtrips and backroad runs are my favorite car activities by far, but with the car in a decent place mechanically and my roadtrips and runs starting to turn into repeats there has been the developing sense that I’m running out of things to do with it. This is about the stage in my car ownership where my eye starts wandering, so to combat that I decided I was out of excuses to not try the whole drifting thing with my own car.
Mind you, it had been a couple years again since the last class, and this little GT-S is no where near as set up or as baseline friendly to drift as the S-chassis school cars I have the most seat time with. But with the old stock wheels sitting around and a new clutch diff housed in the rear axle this felt like the perfect opportunity to go embarrass myself at a public event by trying to learn something.
The learning curve remains steep, but after this I’m ever so slightly less anxious about looking silly attempting to experience something beyond my ability. And, honestly, that’s more important than anything to do with cars.