On swimming and arbitrary but deeply ingrained conventions

When we moved here, I had to learn how to drive on the right-hand side of the car and the left-hand side of the road. I found the right-hand side of the car to be the bigger problem, really. I kept trying to switch gears and instead reaching my right hand directly into the driver's side door, when I was meant to be moving my left hand toward the gear shifter. I frequently turned on the windshield wipers instead of my turn signal. I often walked toward the wrong side of the car to get in -- only once did I actually manage to climb in on the passenger side, just after filling the car up with gas (I still hope no one saw me). Virtually every time I got in on the passenger side on purpose, my right foot reached in vain for the brake pedal that wasn't there. There were definitely deeply ingrained neural patterns associated with the conventions of driving in America.

Because Australia drives on the left side of the road, they also bike on the left side of the bike path and walk on the left side of the sidewalk, hallway, staircase, or grocery store aisle. I was surprised to learn that learning to drive on the left didn't seem to make it easier for me to bike on the left or walk on the left. I found it pretty difficult to remember to stand on the correct side of the grocery store aisle or dodge in the correct direction when someone was walking the opposite direction down the hall. I hypothesize the driving switch was easier to master because there were much bigger consequences for failing than the other modes of transportation carried.

I recently started swimming laps for exercise again. Maybe that sounds like a non-sequitur. I have always loved swimming. Part of it is the near-weightlessness, the endorphin rush, and the sunshine. The constant and rhythmic breathing-and-counting, though, is weirdly meditative and quite nearly hypnotic. There is the number of strokes between breaths, lengths of the pool within repeats, the number of repeats within sets. The time everything takes. The total number of meters in a workout. No sounds but your own splashing, and nothing digital to look at. The pool is where I can spend indefinite time without reaching for a smartphone. It's practically medicine. And right now, when nothing is going like I expect it to, and every bit of news is somehow worse than the last, I needed that. So I went back to the pool.

And swimming on the left side of the lane turns out to be hardest convention switch to master. It's been several months of almost-daily swimming and I still find it difficult. All of my turns are backwards and wonky, because I'm approaching them from the wrong side of the lane. In turns that aren't flip-based, instead of reaching for the wall with my right hand and initiating the turn with my left, I have to reach with the left and initiate the turn with my right, but that feels all wrong, like learning to swing a baseball bat with the wrong hand uppermost. When I cease to pay active attention, I frequently drift toward the right side of the lane. Then I come out of my happy reverie to realize the lane rope is at my right shoulder. Just where it oughta be, except that I live in the Upside-Down, where everything is backwards.