There have been several iterations in different places.
Hopefully this one will stick.
I decided to give Zine (which builds this site you’re on) a shot because it has some neat little features, even though I don’t use Zig for anything else.
I have of course read books throughout my life, including the usual assigned stuff back in grade school. But it’s amazing how much time we are encouraged to spend plopped in front of a screen.
Which stinks because I love movies (TV shows… I could probably do without). Except so many of them today are awful. Similar with video games, everything is becoming a copy of a copy of a copy…
So I started reading more.
I track books with OpenLibrary, although not everything I’ve read is entered yet.
I also read far and wide, so any given book has as much power to enchant me as it does to piss me off. Ideally I always read to understand rather than to self-affirm, but I’ll admit it’s impossible for anyone to always distinguish the two.
Among other things I have been making my way through Frank Herbert’s original six Dune novels. And yes, God Emperor of Dune is definitely the best one, though Dune Messiah and Heretics of Dune are a close second for me.
I equally enjoy fiction and non-fiction, but I think non-fiction is highly over-valuated today. Especially bullshit pop-sci and repackaged philosophy that validates whatever you’re already doing.
1-2 years of scattered time spent learning to sketch and draw from scratch hasn’t produced much of what I want or expected.
It took me a long while to figure out why I wasn’t getting anywhere, and what I have figured out barely scratches the surface of mental blockades to creativity.
But I’ve decided to take some advice given by Steven Zapata to stop listening to others for a while (his title says YouTubers, but really you can apply this to anything).
Historically, I have had a tendency to look for a “class” or “course” that would divulge all the dirty secrets of something to me. Except it was a farce because it would never get applied outside assignments from the course. While no specific thing said to stop doing other art practice, it’s awfully tempting to have a rigid track to follow, and I know my own history well enough to see when I lean far too much on such direction.
And then I also remember how much I hated school. The combo of awful grades and glowing test scores shows a total disinterest in the obsession with arbitrary homework while still completely understanding the material anyway.
What gives?
I have an awful lot to say on this topic, but as a teaser here: it is almost always worth it to follow your interests and let that be your guide for what to learn.
I have taken classes for other languages previously, but they never went anywhere because I didn’t really connect them with anything in particular.
But with an uptick in reading, and tending to go further back in history with each book I pick up, I thought it would be fun to try learning a language again.
I chose Latin practically because there is no other external goal involved. It’s out of sheer interest to be able to read some very old classics in their original language.
In general, I advocate removing steps of indirection and reading things in their native language is a big one. I don’t care if that’s inefficient, and yes, things are always lost in translation.
The method I’m trying is memorization with immersion, as recommended by “The Dowling Method”. Progress is early, but it’s pretty amazing what 30 minutes a day can do in less than two weeks. I’m not an elder, but neither am I young anymore, and I think it’s a big myth that you can’t learn new things as you age. The harder part is to care about it. You’re never going to do the necessary work if you don’t actually care about the act.