Skills

---

Skills, skills, so many skills. So much to learn, so much to want to learn without ever actually working toward learning. I think that’s going to be the theme of this post. Things I’d like to learn but won’t. Something like that.

I’d like to learn to finger pick. I play guitar well enough, but I am a servant of the flat pick. I am useless as a finger picker. I’d like to be better at it, at least. Every now and then I go looking for practice exercises and then spend one or two days working on it before picking up the pick again. Same with slide guitar. I’d like to be decent at it but I probably never will be.

I’d like to be a better programmer. Ever since being promoted to supervisor at work my coding skills have gone down the drain in a big way. I’d like to be better. I would also like to learn different platforms, not the least of them being the other proprietary system my company uses. I would also like to learn how to develop iOS apps. Just for fun.

I’d like to learn how to use Photoshop and Lightroom and other photo editing software systems. I have the teeny tiniest idea of how to use Lightroom, but not enough to use it well. Everything I do ends up looking terrible. There’s a small part of me that wants to learn how to develop film too. That includes dark room printing. I doubt I’ll ever do it, but it sounds like fun in a crazy sort of way.

I would like to learn how to design and build electronics. Specifically guitar pedals and amplifiers. I soldered a circuit together once back when I was in college. It was for a Logic Design course. I know I can do it, I just don’t remember how and what I did was pretty shoddy work.

I have mentioned this one before, and recently. I want to grow my own peanuts. I want to learn how to grow them and then cook them. I already know how to eat them. It seems silly, but that kinda sounds like fun to me. I am not sure why.

One more… this one is insane but I did talk to Jen about it on our Covid drive home from Florida. There is a small part of me that wants to learn how to fly a plane. I think having a pilots license and renting a little single engine and flying around for fun (or for actual travel) would be awesome. There is about a 0.0001% chance I would ever pursue learning this particular skill, but wouldn’t it be awesome?