Teaching an Old(?) Dog New Tricks

Employee Spotlight Profile

Cara Decknadel, Digital Editor
MoldMaking Technology
CompositesWorld
Gardner Business Media, Inc.

No one prepares you for how weird it feels to graduate college and start a career. You spend the majority of your life in school, building towards your career goals and suddenly there are no more projects, no more papers. I dreamt about it for years. I fantasized about coming home from my job and doing nothing, no assignments to forget about or put off to the very last minute, no emails from professors, pure unbothered bliss. Or so I thought.

Another thing no one tells you? How much you will miss learning new things on a regular basis. Your brain is like any muscle, you need to keep flexing and challenging it in order to build it. Also, just like any exercise, it can take a while to get motivated to actually do it. Which is why for most of my twenties, I spent a lot of time on hobbies and projects I eventually abandoned. Part of it was the belief that I had to be good at something the minute I tried it. I practiced my guitar, but not enough, so I was shocked when I wasn’t Jimmy Hendrix after two weeks. I had a very naive idea that everyone who has ever been good at anything was good at it right away. I completely missed the “Practice makes perfect” message in middle school.

There is also a misconception that starting anything past 20 is already “too late” and I held onto that belief a little too tightly. One day in my late twenties, I went to visit some close friends and their 10-year-old said to me “Can I show you some of my skateboarding tricks?” I agreed and followed him out to the yard where he proceeded to show me kickflips and ollies. He had only been skateboarding a couple of weeks. I was envious of his ability to stick to anything that long and progress. “I have always wanted to learn how to skateboard but I am too old,” I said with a laugh. He looked at me like I had just grown a second head. He got very serious, “It is never too late to try.” I laughed again but really took it to heart.

It wasn’t too long after that that I started to longboard. No, I was not consistent with it but I had fun doing it. The rush I would get when I would go a little steeper, a little faster and not fall always gave me the rush I needed to keep going. One day, my fiancé, Kevin, was watching me and he said, “You really need to try snowboarding.” That winter, I was hitting the slopes.

Literally, hitting because I could not stop falling. I took a lesson from an impatient instructor and almost quit right then and there. There was no way I would ever learn, I remember thinking to myself. Kevin attempted to convince me to practice on a larger hill than the bunny slope because I would not get the momentum I needed to learn steering and stopping. My fear kept me from graduating. I stuck to the bunny hill until I finally admitted he was right, in order to get better I was going to have to fully challenge myself.

My first day snowboarding, giving a thumbs up that it is okay to be bad at things!

Getting off the ski lift was a feat in itself. I was especially uncomfortable riding up with strangers. On one of my first lift dismounts I went to get off the chair and began to fall, panicking. I accidentally grabbed the person to my right and brought them down with me. After that, Kevin politely told anyone trying to ride up with us that I was a beginner and needed space getting off the lift. I continued to fall many times boarding down the hill but I didn't give up. It was partly because Kevin wouldn’t let me and partly because I finally understood I would get better if I kept trying.

Eventually, I graduated from the beginner green slopes to the intermediate blue slopes. I used to get queasy on the drive to the slopes, so wound up with nerves, fear of failure getting the best of me. Now, I can confidently make it down longer, steeper runs, the fear that I might fall no longer holding me back. I do still struggle getting off the ski lifts at times but there have been many days since my last incident. I will never be Shaun White but I have come such a long way and found a new activity I enjoy. If I hadn’t taken a chance and continued to push and believe in myself, I would have never gotten this far. I also feel there is a misconception that you must be good at a hobby to enjoy it. In truth, if the point of having hobbies was to be good at them, then no one would have hobbies.

Me after a fall, too tired to get up

Challenging myself carried beyond my hobbies. I had spent almost seven years at a job where I had grown stagnant. I was doing mindless work and not challenging myself. I was consistently applying to different jobs, even outside of my field and not getting anywhere. Then, COVID hit and I became apathetic to the fact that I would ever find a new job, much less one that I liked. After years of job searching, my friend tagged me in a job listing on Facebook. “What do I have to lose?” I thought, as I sent my resume. Less than a week later, I got a call for an interview. That interview led to a second and a third and within a couple of weeks, I was hired at Gardner Business Media.

Working at Gardner has been different from my last job because I am challenged on a daily basis. I have taken on projects the old me never would have. For example, when asked if I would begin to do some video editing, I wanted to say, “no” because I had no faith in my ability to do it. Now, I edit videos regularly and I don’t stumble through the editing software as much as when I first started. I have gotten to a point where I can appreciate a challenge because I know where it is going, I get to learn something new that I didn’t know before.

I am not old by any means. I turned 30 last year and I am not sure what I thought would happen. Everyone made it sound like you turned into a pumpkin at the stroke of midnight of your thirtieth birthday. For me, it has been a new decade to make promises to myself that I intend to keep. One of them being to always keep pushing myself out of my comfort zone because the payoff far outweighs the nervous shakes beforehand. If it is one thing I have learned both from my own life and those around me, you are never too old to start a new hobby, a new venture, or a new career. None of us are making it out of here alive so there is no reason to not make the most of it.

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Cara Decknadel, Digital Editor
MoldMaking Technology
CompositesWorld
Gardner Business Media, Inc.
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About the Author

Cara Decknadel

Cara is the assistant digital editor of MoldMaking Technology and CompositesWorld. Cara has a bachelor’s degree in Mass Communication with a minor in Sociology from Wright State University. Cara is an avid backpacker, snowboarder, and cyclist. She resides in Maineville with her fiancé, Kevin, their dog, Heidi and cats Toulouse, Silver and Molly Shannon.