This is not a picture of a life coach. This individual is a hockey coach. He probably needed a life coach.
Until very recently, I did not know that there was such a thing as a life coach. Now I’m told that I need one.
“A life coach is a type of wellness professional who helps people make progress in their lives and overcome obstacles in order to attain greater fulfillment by helping them identify their own strengths and empowering them to create the changes they seek. “ So…
I Need a Life Coach
I’ve always been pretty useless.
When I was a child, I was totally useless. My father wanted me to be handy, to help him in his basement workshop fixing things and sawing wood. I failed at all those tasks.
Even as a kid, I would have needed a life coach.
In school, I miserably failed at industrial arts and phys. ed. I couldn’t swim more than two lengths, except by dog paddling. No way could I perform a somersault, leap over a box horse, or sink a basket.
I would have needed a life coach.
When I got married for the first time, my best friend was my best man. In his best man speech, he proclaimed that he could describe me best with one word, “useless.”
He wasn’t joking. He meant it.
He could have said that I needed a life coach.
Except that in 1972, such a beast did not exist.
Back then there was no such thing as a life coach.
Throughout my career as a teacher, I would have needed a life coach.
Each new form of technology that we pedagogues were compelled to master filled every crevice of my being with a nameless dread.
From Beta technology to Omnivox, there were 34 years of hell to pay.
The advent of the digital age made me nauseous.
The kindly school technician took pity on me and treated me like an outpatient from the techno-peasant emergency ward; he remained forever on call.
He knew that I needed a life coach.
My students felt extreme compassion as they watched me blanch with trepidation at each rollout of new technology.
They volunteered to wield hand controls and project films.
They offered to teach me PowerPoint.
They knew that I needed a life coach.
Nowadays my life coach, if I had one, would chastise me for being a masochist.
I wrote a book and I’m meant to promote it.
Self-promotion makes me green around the gills. I tilt toward self-deprecation.
Plus….
Hyperlinks make me hyperventilate. Algorithms give me arrhythmias.
I cannot understand ROI, KPI, or SEO.
TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and X are more mysterious to me than quantum physics and more frustrating than the loss of a precious set of keys.
WhatsApp brings me down.
And Hashtags sound like something I used to smoke.
I desperately need a life coach.
I suffer from acute nostalgia. I miss those black telephones with dials and the televisions that flickered and were festooned with rabbit ears.
Every time my cell phone erupts, I panic. I swipe at it to no avail. I’ve been known to throw it across the room.
Can you please recommend a life coach?
My wife has become my part-time life coach.
She’s even more hopeless than I when it comes to technology.
But she doesn’t care.
And she patiently puts up with my inability to fold clothing and towels and my loss of mitts.
I always lose my mitts.
One day our life insurance agent ran over my mitts with her insurance agent vehicle. I had dropped them in the street in early winter slush.
The insurance agent was convinced that I needed a life coach.
But my wife usually finds my mitts before people run over them.
She also discreetly lets me know when I have crumbs stuck to my lips or little bits of cheese adhering to my cheeks.
Or when random unruly hairs spring uninvited from various facial orifices.
She spares me many colossal humiliations of old age.
I love my wife coach. I love her so much.
In fact, my wife coach is the only life coach that I will ever need.
Robert McBryde Author: life coaching, book launching, assisted self-publication, why do I write, the absurd, history, art, poetry, CBC radio, literary non-fiction, vignettes and sketches, immigrant experience, living in Quebec and in France, childhood and animal stories, creative memoirs, satire, autobiography, family relations, raising children, aging, travel, social commentary, love and marriage, driving lessons, self-deprecation, Dijon France, condiments, translation: English-French; French-English
Publisher’s Note: Funny, manic, and wistful… self-deprecating creative nonfiction…The author, Robert McBryde, a professional translator, has been compared to David Sedaris for the sometimes-snarky autobiographical satire characterizing his literary sketches. Many of the stories in his new book, titled My Time with You Has Been Short but Very Funny, have been featured on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation radio network.
Author’s Note:
I’ve written a new book of creative non-fiction titled My Time with You Has Been Short but Very Funny, recently published and now on the market. The book is based on stories that I told over the years as a writer/ broadcaster and host on CBC radio based in Quebec City, Canada.
The book is available via my website. The purchase links are at the bottom of the home page.
https://robertmcbrydeauthor.com/
I will post two blogs per week, normally Wednesday and Friday afternoons at around 4:30 p.m. (Eastern Time). Stay tuned!