There are so many things that I abandoned over the years that I had fun doing that leave me curious now. Why the heck did I ever do that? Sometimes I can check off the growing maturity box ( drinking and smoking). Others have stayed with me for the long haul, and are things that I enjoyed doing, and that made me money. In that category, I place my work in applied anthropology, marine woodcarving, and videography. It’s nice to work in areas that give you pleasure. Now I’d point out that the pleasure did not always extend to the folks I worked for – I’d love to exclude some of them!
Recreation-wise, I’ve been known to play a fierce game of Civilization on my computer, but now I play mostly legacy versions because I find recent renditions to be overly constrained and less free-wheeling than the old ones. I liked the sense of agency that the game used to have. It seems that the software people have tightened the screws on the game model recently.
While I don’t practice guitar as much as I should, I’ve been practicing a lot more this past year. I’ll never return to the old days of one or two hours of practice every day. But a fascinating thing has been happening. I’ve “come back” as a different player. I’m doing things I never did before, and picking in a different style. It’s as if the lengthy layoff allowed me to sneak free of some old habits. It’s very interesting to experience.
I’m waiting till spring when I can resume another of my favorites – gardening. We can’t always do things when we want. We may have to wait for the calendar to advance a few notches.
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Lou, I particularly love this post. All so interesting, about fun activities that get left behind and the ones that stay, and what makes them less fun even though they are still a net good (e.g. coworkers). I particularly love how you talked about guitar practice – that the long break allowed some habits to sneak away, and now you are coming at it in a fresh way. I never would have expected that to happen, and it’s probably inspiring, in a way. “ooh! Who am I now?” I love to play a very old version of Age of Empires. Someone bought me the next generation of it, and I didn’t like it as much as the first. So…as clunky and lame as the graphics are… A couple times a year I joyfully play my old 1990s era AOEII on Steam (someone actually made the old CD version into an in-platform version).
Sometimes they “improve” old games right into the trash bin. I was never into Age of Empires, but other members of the family were. I think, like Civ, they wanted to keep the game updated but lost track of the things that made the game dynamic. The resistance to the most recent version of Civ has been so large that they had to revise and revise the game. But the damage has been done.
The whole guitar thing has been fun and interesting. I’m interested in where it leads to.
nice integration of the prompts as well as fun. I miss Civilization!
Thanks!
The thing is, over time, we’re just not the same people. I’ve thought about that a lot in the past year.
But there is a continuity.
Yep. Definitely. It’s not like we become someone else, maybe more completely ourselves. I dunno’
Yes, the life of the impatient gardener, lol.
I have a plan to use surplus clear plastic storage boxes as cold frame tops. I’ll usew those to “insolate” some of the raised beds for early planting. Never too early to lay plans, Irene. I bet this would work for you too.
Sounds very interesting, I hope you will post about how it turned out.