She literally just starts talking to neighbors… random strangers…
like suggested already. You need to start
I would add to that: and you need to be fine with the idea that you will think you suck at it (and maybe will), for a while.
We all suck at learning something new.
That’s like learning to read and to write: you don’t start by writing the next Great American Novel, right? You effing fill silly amount of pages with clumsily traced letters and with endless mistakes. Or learning to ride a bike: you will not win the next ‘Tour de France’ a few days after you started pedaling for the first time… you won’t even be able to immediately remove your safety wheels. Or learning to… walk: you certainly did not start by winning a marathon? Like all of us, you started by falling on you toddler diapered bottom. We all did.
You learn by trying and by failing. We all do. And there is no shortcut to that, doesn’t matter how stupidly and how hard the modern educative system is trying to persuade you you can and deserve to ‘easily’ succeed: that’s a lie. It’s hard work and a lot of failed attempts or you won’t learn shit (see how kids get out of schools nowadays barely able to write their names and to read)
He’s been in the US for 15 years and barely any English…
Maybe it is not that important to him? As someone probably older than your dad, I can say there are plenty things I could be doing and I have never done myself, because I don’t think they’re that important to me. Once again, we all.
I’m such a disappointment…
As long as you think of yourself as some kind of special failure, you won’t be able to step out of the shit place you seem to be stuck in. We all wish we could be better at this or that, or at everything we’re not. That’s to be expected.
Also, at least as important: keep in mind that thinking of oneself as a failure that the world should blame is just the reverse way of thinking of yourself as a wonderful and unique person that the world should admire… Both point of views are mistaken. Entirely. Both show the same… fear that one can also see, but in a much less self-destructive, in the ‘I’m a perfectionist’ excuse countless people use all the time to never do a thing. ‘I can’t, because I won’t do it perfectly’. Which is bullshit: what they’re really saying is ‘I’m too afraid of failing to even try, and if what people will say when I fail’ (or I’m tool lazy but this one is much rarer imho). And, no, I certainly never learned that myself first hand because, quite obviously, I’m perfection :p ;)
Seriously, get rid of that shit. It took me decades to do it. Don’t waste as much time as did.