One new thing…

Some years ago, my dear friend Michael told me he had decided to learn one new thing every year.  He wanted to grow and expand and add to his abilities and knowledge.

So he did.

One year he took an auto mechanics course, another he wrote a book, another he taught himself to cook deserts,  now that’s my kind of man;  another year he learned to swim…he was well into adulthood at the time, so it must have been doubly challenging.  This wasn’t a new-year resolution sort of thing either.  In fact he deliberately chose springtime as the optimal time to begin.

I fell in love with this idea.  The prospect of learning something new every year was exhilarating and I wasn’t ready to miss any of life’s opportunities.

Belly dancing, piano, zumba, French x2, flying, golf, yoga, pilates, tennis…I started them all well, but was a really, really poor finisher.  In fact never finishing anything at all, except perhaps golf – it must count for something that I played for 5 years or so.

There were many more new years, with many a fascinating and new thing to be learned, sadly all with equally humiliating and unsatisfactory outcomes. And so I’ve made a decision.  I’m going back to Mike’s philosophy…oh wait, I’ve started already with this blog.  It’s entirely unfamiliar territory, filled with opportunities to learn something new, or maybe just to learn how to do some old things better.

Judging by the photos I’m posting, photography might be a good place to start and I might as well confess it now, I’m back to French for the third time.   I’ll keep you posted on any progress.

Problem is Italian sounds inviting too…or is it Italians speaking English with an Italian accent that attracts? Of course Spaniards speaking English sound great as well…think Penelope Cruz or Antonio Banderas.

Why did I think procrastination was a thing of the past?