My friend Pippa is strong and driven. Well, that’s how she comes across; she freely admits to having all the same flaws as us ordinary mortals in person, but actually getting to hear her say that in person can be tricky. Why? Because she’s one of those people with enormous amounts of energy who actually try and do stuff with their lives.
Right now, Pippa is living in Berlin and working a project she calls the DIY Masters. As part of that project, she produced a list of 100 things she wanted to learn, and invited others to do the same. I managed to get to 50 before I started feeling really low on ideas. Here they are:
One Hundred Fifty Things I Want to Learn
- I want to play a song and sing it in front of people
- I want to learn to be happier
- I’d like to learn how to cook
- Concentration
- Something that I can earn money from
- A style of writing that anyone would want to read
- How to smell good
- How to make cake
- How to bake
- How to use an oven
- Normalisation
- Programming in Processing
- Enough electronics to get me through
- To speak another language
- Speaking another language that most people can’t, but is still useful
- To be able to identify quotes when I hear them
- How to relate to poetry
- Yoga
- Better awareness of my body
- How to juggle four balls
- Some bar flair; maybe not enough to get a bar job, but enough to show off
- How to give great presentations to groups of people
- How to teach
- I’d love to learn what I’m obsessed with, because it seems like everything
- Dancing in public
- How to make a neat wordpress theme that works for me
- The secret of having less stuff
- How to ignore it when people really hate you
- Read less crap
- An awareness of literary genre’s outside of SF
- The best things to do with my damaged knee
- How to have a stable life
- Writing long form
- Drive a car
- Be tidier
- Personal presentation
- How to be less attached to physical gadgets
- Understand what draws me to a person romantically
- How to learn in a structured manner that suits me
- Be less self-critical
- Think of projects that can be completed
- Do more things that I think of
- Work harder
- Learn to sail a boat
- Swearing with maximum effect
- Remembering to say sounds like ‘th’ instead of ‘f’ and the ‘r’ in brought.
- To take ‘away time’ from computers
- Better mark-making skills
- Refresh my drawing skills
- Learn how to keep plants alive
