I do believe I may be taking on too much for this year. Lemme know what you think.
In my twenties, I composed a bucket list of three things I wanted to accomplish before my exit from this body: learn to play the violin, learn to speak Greek, and learn how to fly a small airplane. Let’s see how I’ve done on all that, nearly fifty years later, shall we?
I have been retired for 16 years now. Sixteen years! For seven of those years, I was caring for my bedridden and very ill son. I couldn’t leave him alone for long, no more than a few hours at a stretch, and I could do that only once or twice a week. It was hard.
In need high impact breaks of short duration, I developed interests in several things I could do in my own home, such as gardening, tap dancing, and blogging right here on good ole Hive. I learned how to sing! I also performed in plays, for which rehearsals rarely exceeded two hours in length; I could actually go be someone else for those two hours, a huge relief! I called these rehearsals my mini vacations.
After my son’s death, I finally had time to throw myself more fully into my hobbies, and throw myself I did. I spent a great deal of time here on Hive, hours of every day. My garden benefitted and I learned a lot about preserving the food I grew. Tai Chi became a daily practice.
Last year I embarked on a brand new vocation, and after one year of grueling studies, I have earned the right and the confidence to call myself a homeopath. I’ve gotten into many other healing methods over the years – a slew of diets, medical intuitives, nutritionists, essential oils, chiropractic, reiki, rolfing and others – but none of them actually effected cures of conditions like homeopathy does. That stuff works. You actually get better!
It's been four months since my graduation this past August. I’d gotten quite time-disciplined during my first year of homeopathic studies, so when graduation was over, I had lots of morning time to fill. I gleefully threw myself into my hobbies: gardening and Tai Chi at first. Then I finally began taking those violin lessons, with a really good classical teacher, the only kind I could find in this hillbilly town in upstate New York. Recently, a feeler I’d put out years ago for a country fiddle teacher finally paid out. I’ve only had one lesson with that fiddler so far, but I am sold. So now I have two violin teachers! Both he and my classical teacher are the Real Deals.
They have both piled work onto me.
I have a trip to Greece in the planning stages for over the summer, so I guess it’s now-or-never time to learn how to speak that language.
In short, I expect to hone my skills in Tai Chi, to become a better classical violinist, to learn to speak some Greek, and to learn how to jam with country and folk music bands.
Sounds good, right? Not bad for a seventy year old, no?
All’s good except for one thing.
My studies are certainly not over, learning homeopathy never is, and my second year of homeopathic studies is to start tomorrow. While I am looking forward to this, I am going to have to become very disciplined to pull it off, as well as to keep up with all the other things I hope to learn.
So what do you think? Too much?
This is my entry to the Silver Blogger community's topic of the week , Learning and skills you would like to learn or improve this year.
What have you got to show for yourself?
