New Thing Time!

Maybe...

Or I mean, there will be new things, but I'm not sure if this will be one of them or not.

I already know that the big new thing will be Brent's retirement, but I don't know how that will look once we are in it so I can't really call it the new thing, even though it will totally be a new thing. And that won't start until November basically, so it really doesn't count.

Yes, we are a week out from my birthday and so my brain is starting to chew on things for the new year. Last year I picked up Masterclass. And it was good, until it wasn't. The Masterclass of old (a lot of experts giving multipart Keynote speeches basically) has turned into AI AI AI! Which isn't all that great if you are not a fan of AI and have no urge to see people with real jobs get replaced by machines with a tenuous grasp on facts.

So yeah... Masterclass was fine for 57 but 58 needs something new.

And I was thinking maybe I'll try to learn how to play the guitar.

I've thought about it off and on for years. I didn't do it when I was younger because Susan played the guitar and I basically did the WWSD question and always did something else. And for the most part it worked out great. Don't do drugs kids. If she hadn't been trying to hide her cigarette smoking from Mom so ended up hiding it from me I probably would have never smoked. John, Susan and I all ended up being smokers and we all hide it from each other for years. Because we were hiding it from Mom who HATED cigarette smoking with a passion. Jeff never smoked. I always say there is no surprise as to why he was the favorite. It was well earned.

But there are things that are silly or stupid that I just don't do because of Susan. Like wear pink. I've tried off and on through the years to wear it. My mother would buy me pink things when I was in high school because she assumed I would like them if they only had a little pink, or a light pink. But I never did. I wore them anyway because, one I look really good in pink, and more so two, we were broke. Any new clothing item was like a gift from the heavens. You mean NOBODY has worn this before? Outstanding. And as an adult I try every once in a while to do it as well. But I find that anything pink ends up just hanging in the closet as the last thing I grab. Because pink was Susan's favorite color.

Guitar is another one of those things. She played in high school so I didn't. But I think I'm going to give it a try.

Here are my challenges I can see already. I don't have very tough fingers and I don't know if I'll last through the discomfort of toughening them up. They aren't as sensitive as they were when I was a massage therapist, but they are still pretty sensitive. The other is I will never be able to tune the guitar because I have lousy pitch. Which will also affect the playing of said guitar, but I'm more worried about the tuning. And the last is that I don't know how to read music and I don't think I want to learn. I know there are workarounds for that so we will see if they actually work.

The things I have going for me. Brent owns guitars. I'm going to use the acoustic. I think the electric is pretty and the songs are fun, but I feel like acoustic is what I should try. I'm pretty ambidextrous (seems horrible to say on International Left Handers Day, but I am) so I can use his right handed guitar to learn. Which also makes finding free lessons on YouTube a lot easier. And I want free because I'm not sure at all that I will stick to it for very long.

I like the IDEA of playing guitar. I know that. But I don't know if I will like learning how to play guitar. But the only way to know for sure is to try it right?

So it's on the list for 58.

Maybe.

I mean, things are always subject to change until I write the birthday blog. And there is a part of me that is still thinking I should refrain from any goals or expectations for the next year and just see how things go. There is part of me that isn't even sure Brent is going to make it past December before he's looking for a new job. Not his old job, I don't think he's going to miss that at all, but a new challenge. It's what he did at Intel for years and years. He would work in one position until it bored him and then he would look for a new challenge. He's worked in a lot of different areas, doing a lot of different things because of that. I'm not sure that catching up on all of the movies and TV shows we've missed is going to hold the same thrill for him.

BUT...that's the future and we don't know the future.

Right now all we know is that I'm contemplating trying to learn how to play the guitar.