Introduction

My name is Seth. Yesterday I turned 30 years old. I don't know how to swim.

This has been a source for mild embarrassment through my life. Any time that it is mentioned, it is always met with a scrunched brow and a "Really?" More so however, it has been a source of frustration. Why so frustrating? Because swimming looks like a lot of fun.

Like, serious fun. You've been swimming I assume. Is it awesome? Yeah, I thought so. My reaction around water is to keep my distance, and if I find myself in it, to never let my feet not be firmly planted on the bottom.

Swimming does not run in my family. Two of my sisters can kind of float, but no one can swim. My mom doesn't go in the water, but her husband is an avid water skier despite not knowing how to swim. He just trusts life jackets a bit more than I do I suppose.

I even almost drowned in a river once when I was 12 or so. Perhaps that's a story for another day.

But I am stating today that I will learn to swim now that I'm 30. It gets no easier the older you get, so this should be interesting. My motives are twofold; one, as previously stated, swimming looks like crazy awesome fun; two, I need to motivate myself to get some things accomplished in life, and I think that if I can overcome the odds against learning to swim at the age of 30, I should be able to get on with other goals that keep seeming to get delayed.

So here's the plan. I'm gonna scour the internet for any and all swimming-for-adult advice that I can find. I will try to hold myself to getting to a lake or pool once a week to practice these methods, and report back here how well it goes. I hope that by sharing the humiliating results with you, and perhaps with some mocking from you, I will find the motivation to FINALLY learn how to swim.

Or I'll drown for real this time. We'll see I guess!