Easy looking hard; hard looking easy

A wonderful Labor Day/anniversary/getaway weekend at our favorite inn, Abbott's Glenn. Besides the usual being spoiled and eating wonderful food, there were especially interesting fellow guests.
I found myself sitting next to a heavy machinery operator at dinner and, not knowing a thing about operating heavy machinery, I asked him one of my favorite questions: in your job, what is easy to do but looks hard to people who don't know anything about it, and, conversely, what is hard to do but people don't appreciate it because it looks so easy?
It turns out that going straight up or down a steep hill with an excavator is actually easier to do than it looks, partly because the machine has treads which hold it in place, but also because you can use the scooper on the end to balance the weight of the cab and engine, or dig the scooper into the ground to keep yourself from sliding. (Of course, if you start to slide sideways it becomes something that looks hard and really is hard.)
What looks easy but is actually hard is setting the excavator in the middle of a flat street and digging. Under the street are water and sewer mains and all kinds of pipes and cables that you have to avoid; and up above are the power lines that you don't want your scoop tangled up in. It's fiddly work; but from the outside it looks as though you're just sitting there.
I found this fascinating, and spent parts of the rest of the weekend thinking about how the questions apply to me.

In my profession, what's easy but looks hard comes from everyone's first question: what in the world do you do on the first day when no one understands anyone else? All I can say is that this is my absolute favorite part of ESL. In the first class I just make it clear to the students that they can learn another language, that it's going to be fun, and that I won't ask them to do anything that's beyond them.
What looks easy but is hard comes about a third of the way through the year, when all the ground rules are set and we've agreed on who is boss, and the class just hums along. That's when someone usually says, "But those foreign students are all so hardworking and dedicated. You never have any problems with them, do you?" They don't see all the hard work that got us to that point.

What about my present situation? What's easy but looks hard is when the nurse "accesses my port", ie. punches a needle into my chest to draw blood or put in the chemo. It usually doesn't hurt, but Jerry can't look when they're doing it.
What is hard but looks easy is having to tell acquaintances about my having cancer. By now, everyone important to me knows, so it shouldn't be hard to tell people I don't care about. But I hate seeing the expression coming across their faces (omigod, that's terrible, what do I say to her, that's one of the bad ones, but she looks all right), so I find myself trying to smooth it over for them. I have it down to a science: a few matter-of-fact but optimistic statements, and then a graceful turn of the conversation. But it is painful to do.

What about you? In your life, what do people admire that (for you) is really a piece of cake? What, on the other hand, do others take for granted that you really have to work at?