Saturday, May 04, 2024

Inspired (but still working on motivated)

On our recent travels to Mexico we met an inspiring young friend of our daughter-in-law. 
This brilliant young woman apparently regularly takes on new hobbies or interests, pours herself into learning them, and then moves on to learning something else. At the time we were together she was learning to play the piano. She had purchased a small portable keyboard and would practice playing as she made time for it.

I'm thinking that I should do something like that with the abundance of time that retirement affords me. 
There are three things that come to mind that I should work on:

1)  A few different friends have been on me to re-engage in magic. It is an incredibly fun hobby, but requires a good amount of time and practice if one is going to perform for audiences. Maybe I need to adjust my mindset from the past standard of a semi-professional performer to sharing some simple and amazing entertainment with a few friends. That simple kind of change in perspective might help me work on performing at a slightly different level.
    It would also force me to work on a different genre of magic than I have done in the past -- close up magic vs parlor or stand-up magic.

2)  Learning Spanish. It's just something I need to do.

3)  Last summer I bought a ukulele with the idea of learning to play it. I worked on it for a few weeks and set it aside. I'd probably prefer to take up guitar playing again, but the uke was affordable and I really don't see a reason not to go ahead and learn it.

I plan to make some regular time for each of these activities/learning experiences. 
I have a local friend that will encourage me in the magic department, and may have a person or two that I can converse with in Spanish. I don't know of anyone that can help me with the ukulele so I may be on my own with only YouTube to help me with that.

How are you growing your mind?
What are you learning?

John

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