Ive been diving a while and have done more than a few dives, last year I completed my DM cert. Im often still amazed about how much i DONT know. When I look back on my early diving I think not drowning was more luck than planning. In an effort to become a more a knowledgable diver I am about to buy a bottom timer and relegate my computer to my gear bag for a while and will begin planing all my dives and gas management etc using my brain instead of blindly following my comp without any real thought. I don't have a mentor so pretty much have to learn from watching others and this fine community. The minute you think your experienced thats when over confidence and complacency can set in, both of which could kill you. I have caught myself a few times becoming a little cocky as to my abilities, then I read the accidents and incidents threads and remind myself that although I am a capable diver I am not all that and a bag of chips. I often try to visualize things that can wrong while diving in an attempt to be more ready should something happen, its all very well thinking I know what to do when XYZ happens but it is often a little different when actually XYZ does actually happen. Often no one knows how they will deal with a bad situation until it happens. I was diving in Thailand a couple of years ago, I had done several hundred dives all without incident, when my 2nd stage diaphragm collapsed I could feel the panic was about to bolt for the surface, I was at 20+ meters, I managed to catch myself and switched to my backup. It made me realise just how quickly things could have gone bad and how I was obviously not as able as I thought. I began to re think my abilities. I studied Tae Kwon Do for many years and often would get bored/frustrated at the constant repetition of fighting patterns etc my instructor told me that we do repetition so it becomes muscle memory, a reflex and action without thinking, something we can do at a time of possibly hight stress. I try and apply this to my diving. As another poster similarly said learning to dive should not be the end destination but the beginning of the journey. I am a newbie, albeit an experienced newbie.
