People Share What Seemingly 'Easy' Things Turned Out To Be Extremely Difficult

Folding sheets is so hard. The most common type of ghost is the one in a white sheet with waving arms. These are the spirits of people who died while trying to fold a fitted sheet.

Finding a career you’ll want to go to every day that won’t crush your soul. Remember when you were young, and teachers told you that you could be whatever you wanted to be... yeah, not so realistic when you want to pay bills and maybe have a little beer money too. I didn’t go to college and struggle with the thought of not being able to have a lateral career move without a degree, but then I see my friends absolutely floundering with their student loan payments and think maybe I don’t have it, so bad after all.

Socializing with people. I have severe social anxiety, and even small interactions with strangers and even some people I’ve known for a while are really hard for me. I don’t hate people or dislike being around them, but I’m just awful at keeping conversations going or initiating them. Outgoing people make it look very easy. For me, it is not.

I think many people believe that they will be romantically in love with the person they are marrying. In many ways, you do,, but most with long successful marriages will tell you it takes work to make a marriage last a lifetime. That level of commitment is hard to maintain.

The rewards are enormous, and you'll never be closer to another human if you're doing it right. My wife and I just celebrated our 40th, and we've known each other for more than 45 years. We are planning on being together till the end.

It's like lego sets. Anyone can follow the instructions and make the millennium falcon. But it's a whole different ballgame when you're given a pile of assorted blocks, and someone says, "Okay, now... recreate the Taj Mahal. But the client wants it to look like Big Ben. It also needs to be able to interlock with the Sphinx, the Great Wall, the Eiffel Tower, and the Mojang Temple to create a super monument. Yes, I know the Mojang Temple hasn't been designed yet, just make some good guesses. We can add parts to it once we know what we need."

Maybe I'm just stupid, but I used to think getting good at an instrument was a super easy thing that any bonehead could do cause I knew so many people that had done it. I was very, very wrong. It took me about 2 years on trombone before I wasn't literally painful to listen to. Kept it up for 4 more years, played in my community college band, high school marching band, and jazz band simultaneously, And compared to professional players, I was still very far from being "goo.”. I've since traded brass for strings. Really drove home the message for me that nothing worthwhile comes without serious effort.

You see videos of these old dudes in their veils and beekeeping suits, and it makes it seem so relaxing and easy. It turns out that bees aren't so good at finding enough food on their own, and they can get sick really easy and in the winter they can mold. Have you ever seen moldy bees? Sometimes they're not even dead...

It's still worth it though.

There’s a huge difference between being a scientist and being a fan of science. Both are important, but they aren’t the same. A lot of people take a science class or start following a science-based Facebook/Twitter/subreddit and only see the successes.

Science is a critical thought heavy endeavor that requires equal parts patience, smarts, and luck. As a researcher doing basic science you’re going to have >90% negative data. For every scientific publication you see, there are months or even years of negative data behind it.

The stuff that science fans and cheerleaders share on Facebook from pages like I fking love science is distilled from the frustrations and efforts of scientists that probably drink heavily.

Making an actual quality meme. Inside jokes are normally easy, and memes for content-specific subs is really easy, but making original content for a wider audience (r/memes for example) then it feels almost impossible to make content that will be ‘widely liked’.

Being a kid. You can't choose what to eat, you can't just find night-shift work if you aren't a morning person, you can't relax after school because you go home with stacks of homework every day, you have ahole peers that you're forced to be around every day, you're always under supervision, and nobody takes you seriously.

Don't get me wrong, it's full of fun times, and I still miss it, but we take adult life for granted sometimes.

The concept is simple. Make food hot and eat it. Put it in a pan and it gets hot. Put it in an oven and it gets hot. Even a microwave! Anyone can cook.

But to truly master cooking is insanely difficult. Flavor profiles, spice combinations, temperatures, textures, proper tools, different techniques, different cultures and origins, safety, presentation, the list goes on and on.

I usually cut my meals (say, a steak) in little pieces like you would for a small child while holding the knife in my right hand. Then switch knife to left and fork to right hand and start eating. Either that or I switch hands every time after cutting a piece off my meal.

Using the fork with my left hand is just incredibly uncomfortable and difficult. Only do this when I eat in a fancy restaurant or a similar setting.

I hate that every moderately popular and attractive person thinks they can do it straight out of high school. It's a real craft. Many actors/actresses have been doing it since the age of 5 and started with plays/commercials etc.

You can't just show up with a handsome face.

If you've ever seen athletes in a commercial, you know how stupid someone can sound/ look when they clearly have no idea what they're doing in front of a camera. It takes an insane amount of skill to invoke that suspension of belief.

It seems simple, nearly everybody does it, but it takes a lot of practice, and many people do it very poorly. Even something seemingly simple like interpreting road signs is beyond a lot of people.

After a few years, we really forget how difficult it was at first to try to concentrate on mirrors, shifting, pedals, etc.

Effective user interface (or design generally).

Great design and you never notice it is there. Things are intuitive and seem uncomplicated. Terrible design is the design that you notice, have to think about, and does things in an unexpected way. Great design looks easy because it seems so straightforward.

We take in an immense amount of information just making our way down the street, up and over curbs, etc., and we process it and use it to make hundreds of split-second decisions, all without the slightest bit of reflection. We unconsciously decide how high to lift our feet, when to stop, how quickly to stop, how sharply to turn or pivot, how to get out of someone's way. We're pretty awesome.

Orchestral conducting. It looks like you're just waving your arms around holding a white stick and emoting. It actually takes loads of specialist knowledge, baton technique, rehearsal technique, the ability to read and learn a score with anything from 5-30 separate lines for different instruments in different clefs and with a range of transpositions. All this takes years to acquire, and getting the opportunity to practice those skills is very hard.

You need leadership, scholarship, imagination and perseverance. Then you have to interpret the music and guide the orchestra fearlessly in concert.

Plenty of people love to give advice, and the impulse to do so feels altruistic. However, most of the time the advice is given without giving much thought to who the other person is and their circumstances. Although I believe it's subconscious, I do think most people give advice to make themselves feel wise or to justify their own decisions in life. Even someone who is really supposed to be looking after the best interests of the other person, like a mentor or a parent, often just see the other person as a narcissistic extension of themselves.

That whole phrase “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach” is such bullst. To creatively and effectively come up with ways to explain concepts to anyone (children or adults) is not easy.

Drawing something from memory. Like a bird or something.

In mind - yep that's a bird

On paper - that's... a bird?

Maintaining friendships from high school/college after you graduate. People get so busy with work and starting their own families that friendships get put on the back burner. You stop talking to someone for a few months, then it suddenly hits you that you're no longer friends with the person.

Dressage (commonly known as "horse dancing.") It often looks like the rider is just sitting there. (which is the entire goal, you want to look like you're just sitting there.) The reality is that it's a constant conversation. The rider is giving a series of cues to the horse, most of which is given through the seat and legs. Body posture and positioning is a huge thing. For example, I can drop the reins to my horse and turn in figure eights using just my legs, and body position (seat, shoulders, etc.) I can control how fast or slow we're going (including stopping) without using the reins either. The reins are there for a purpose though, often for things you wouldn't think of like balancing the horse.

It's extraordinarily difficult just to master, and requires building up a lot of weird muscles that you don't know exist until they start hurting. Not to mention the connection to the horse you need to build, and knowing how to cue and ride your specific horse. Different horses require different things and have different hang ups (I've ridden a claustrophobic horse, for example, and to much pressure on the reins caused him to have a panic attack) so there's also that.

I use a wheelchair, and people usually don't believe me when I say that getting around can be difficult because many of them think that pushing a wheelchair is easy. (They literally tell me this.)

The thing is, when you use a wheelchair all day, If it is basically your only means of transportation, it looks more natural.

This becomes a problem when I point out accessibility problems. They often don't believe me because they see how I can navigate and assume that it's easy – just because I make it look easy.

I'll never forget the time I went out and bought a decently priced helicopter.

Five minutes into setting it up, I didn't even get it 3 feet off the floor before I smashed it into a chair, destroying the rotor blades.

I tried maybe like 5-6 more times before I gave up, and now it hangs in my garage as a monument to my failure.

Dancing. I wouldn't say it looks "easy,” but when I see people do it, they're so good at it, and it flows so well it looks easy. But damn, I just CANNOT get my body to do anything more than a bop and maybe some stupid arm moves.

I'm 25 and dance like a 50 year old at a reunion.

Dancers are so delicate and make it look so easy; it’s honestly amazing. It's just hilarious when I try to do literally anything and fail horribly.

A basic physical exam at the doctor’s looks like a simple 'look at the throat' 'listen to the chest' 'yup they have a heart all right.' When in actuality Doctors spend thousands of hours practicing it so that when you come in with a murmur or 'Funny-looking-kid-syndrome' they can recognize it immediately.

And yes, there are entire class sections on how to respectfully ask your patient to turn their head and cough as you push on their balls (they're looking for hernias).

Everyone thinks it's great fun and likes to offer suggestions but every tree, lake, and other natural feature has at least a dozen variations which you can't repeat for emergency service reasons.

That and you get cities which want a street name change anytime the road changes direction regardless of a logical break point like an intersection.

I always thought that in addition to being a talented musician, you also have to have a 'character' to make it big. In addition to liking your music people want you to put on a show to keep them entertained.

Take notice of how many famous musicians have quirks or do crazy stuff to keep their names in the news. People want that.

I waited tables for ten years. It's good money compared to a lot of other jobs in that skill bracket. The obvious things that suck about it are rude customers and being on your feet. The less obvious things are more daunting. It's emotionally exhausting work. After singing and dancing for possibly as much as 12 hours, you're covered in food-film and counting out one-dollar bills hoping you'll make rent.

People do not respect the work. Waiters are "less than" to a lot of people and you'll feel it. You see articles from time to time about how substance abuse is a big problem for waiters. That's why. It's not because it's tiring or difficult. It's because it's humiliating.

Most people are struggling with their dead-end job, failed relationships, preparing for a competitive exam, working on an already implemented idea etc.

Even when they are 100% aware that they are stuck and are going nowhere, yet because of various reasons like Personal ego, Societal norms, Parental advice, Peer pressure, Short-sightedness, Sacrificing mental peace over money, Going after fame/popularity than happiness etc., they are unable to move forward.

I know it's really hard, but these are the choices that strengthen one's inner core. I've made quite a few of those myself. Though you'll regret it every day for the first few months or maybe years, in the longer run, you'll lead a hassle-free, satisfying, more fulfilling and happier life.