In My Copious Free Time

There’s so much I want to learn.  Just SO MUCH STUFF.  In no particular order…

• How to sing.  I can play the piano a wee bit, but singing just seems fun.  And singing in a group – incredible fun and a wonderfully social activity at that.  I did once attend a gospel singing thing with a friend, and it was fun, even for an atheist who took the lyrics as being merely secondary to the joyful noise business.  But alas, one thing I discovered from gospel singing is this: that I can clap and I can sway, and I can sway and I can sing, and I can sing and I can sway, but ask me to do all three together?  Bit of a calamity.
• Mandarin Chinese.  我学习汉语，但是没有老师。所以我不好， 可是很喜欢汉子也喜欢新语！ Or to put it another way: I like a language that’s so visual when written, and I like the way different languages change the ways you can think about the world, since they also change the way you express ideas.  I’d also quite like to learn Spanish.  It seems both funky and useful.
• Yoga.  Or just anything really which means I don’t creak like a wicker chair after every martial arts class or brisk bit of exercise I do.  Again, a bit like Chinese, I get that this is something I can do at home.  But also like Chinese, I suspect this is something that I’ll do infinitely, a thousand thousand times better, with a bit of time and teaching.
• Coding.  I get a bit of HTLM, but there it ends.  I wanna learn CSS, Ruby, Python, Java; I wanna understand the technology that’s changing the world, and I wanna use it!  I wanna make stuff, and build things that go beep, and maybe even do a little bit more….
• Pottery.  Seriously: who DOESN’T want to learn pottery?  Find me someone who doesn’t find the merest concept therapeutic, and I’ll show you someone who’s three minutes away from a hernia.
• Clothes making.  I’ve got some rudimentary wardrobe skills, courtesy of Ra-de-da.  I can sow on buttons, hem trousers, put on a patch, fix a few tears – I can also sew two bits of fabric together along a roughly straight line, and have made the occasional pillowcase and stick-carrying bag out of this.  But you know what clothes making really takes?  Time.  Lovely lovely time that I just don’t really have.
• Climbing.  I am about as physically tough as wet tissue paper.  I don’t really wanna get tough, but I would like to be able to climb stuff without feeling that my arms are gonna drop off.  A large part of it is psychological – I’m informed.  If you don’t believe that you can dangle by your fingertips off a sheer wall, you never will.  Or it could be that I can’t dangle by my fingertips off a sheer wall… discuss.
• Archery.  Come on.  This one’s like pottery.  Find me someone who doesn’t enjoy the idea of shooting stuff at things without the angst of guns (and I have been to a gun range and can report that it wasn’t my cuppa tea) and I’ll find you someone who is in desperate need of letting themselves go a touch…
• Painting.  See: pottery.
• Swimming.  This is sorta an improvers skill.  I swim when I get the chance, and will aim to do my 1500m every session, if not a bit more.  But as I pootle up and down the medium lane, minding my own business, I’m always overtaken by these shark-like, graceful creatures effortlessly sliding along in the fast lane, and basically, I wanna do that.  I wanna learn to do what those guys do, because it looks fun, and because one of the joys of swimming is that it’s something you can learn to do better.
• Escrima.  Also an improvers skill.  I’ve got my grade 7, but there’s sooooo much to learn.  So much, and if some of that learning can be directed towards a noble cause – towit, teaching other women – then yay.  Big yay, big tick.
• Juggling.  Because who doesn’t like juggling?  Also the eye-hand co-ordination thing appeals across multiple other disciplines.
• Physics.  I’ve got an ancient Physics A-Level, but the universe is big and shiny and exciting and I wanna learn more.  And one of the great things about Physics is that odds are, I’ll never be able to keep up with just how much stuff there is to learn, there’s no end to it, no obvious answer at the end of the model, and that’s wonderful.  That’s an exciting, groovy thing.

Argh the universe is just so full of stuff I wanna do!  And that doesn’t even cover the places I want to see, the stories and music I wanna hear!  There’s so much stuff, so much teaming, awesome, exciting stuff, my mind kinda boggles with it and all I need…

… meh…

… is time.

And the money to pay for the time, of course.  Which isn’t a glamorous statement, but is, alas, true.  I have no idea what being rich would do for me, but I hope with all my heart that if it ever came, I’d spend the money on time, travel and learning, rather than on golden shower heads.  And if the chance ever came after that, I’d like to also have a wee bit of time left over, to share that knowledge with others, and get excited with my peers about just how much more stuff there is to know.