One of my ongoing personal goals is to spend time on a regular basis learning something that pushes me out of my comfort zone. For years that thing was marimba. I never took music lessons nor do I read musical notation, so this was a real challenge. I played primarily Zimbabwean music, which is traditionally learned by ear, so it was a great match for me. I attended a weekly class with both skilled and patient classmates. I really enjoyed the experience and still miss it.
I stopped taking marimba classes as CubeSpace was winding down. There was so much going on and I was so sad that my heart just wasn’t in it anymore. From time to time I still think about picking it back up. What holds me back is an unfortunate mental link between marimba and that difficult period in my life. Perhaps some day I will be ready to go back to marimba again. Until then, I have found other ways to keep myself busy.
This year I had hoped to split my learning time between weaving and PHP (a programming language used to build dynamic websites). Putting together a weaving project from scratch is a very complicated process involving a fair amount of math. I have been reading up on the subject and I am almost ready to tackle my first project. The only thing holding me back is the location of my loom. I know that sounds like a lame excuse. Mostly because it is a lame excuse. I just need to set aside a few uninterrupted hours to rearrange some furniture and purge some accumulated crap to make it happen. I am embarking on some new work-related projects, so I suspect this won’t happen until fall.
My PHP learning has suffered a similar fate. I have been spending the bulk of my learning time working on my CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) as I make more customized sites using WordPress. It is amazing how much there is to learn. I learn best by doing, so my current project list has done wonders for my skill acquisition. And the more I learn, the more I see just how much more there is for me to learn. I find the process to be both energizing and daunting.
I find Portland summers a great time to learn because the extra daylight tricks me into having longer work days. The current heat wave is making my working day shorter because I work from home and the only air conditioner is in our bedroom. So right now I am struggling between a desire to learn and heat exhaustion. But the outlook is good. The heat should break tomorrow and hopefully that will allow me to get my mojo back.