Back at the start of 2009 I made a list of things I wanted to learn. I was hurting at that time; I remember typing out those words in my cold, dark room, almost totally heartbroken and suffering strange stomach pains that I was putting down to IBS. I posted the list onto my website and then got on with my life, which (as I couldn’t have foreseen at the time) meant meeting a great girl and discovering I had a life-threatening illness.
As you can see from my list, that wasn’t really on my agenda.
For some reason that list keeps turning up in logs as something that people are looking at. So I thought I’d update it.
Fifty Things I Want to Learn
- I want to play a song and sing it in front of people – hmm, nope.
- I want to learn to be happier – it appears the secret is to not give a toss about what other people think. Learning how to do that is hard, but I’m working on it (see comment no.2 below).
- I’d like to learn how to cook – on hiatus while I live with my parents. Not because I’m lazy, but because they have a tiny kitchen. On the other hand, I can now make rocking pancakes.
- Concentration – goes hand-in-hand with happiness and actually enjoying what you are doing
- Something that I can earn money from – not fully worked this out yet, but I’m doing ok.
- A style of writing that anyone would want to read – to dream! The impossible dream! There is nothing that everybody wants to read, and the closest answers seem to be “Jeffrey Archer” and “Dan Brown”. Uh, no thanks.
- How to smell good – this sounds stupid, right? Well these days I just shower, but I had a number of girlfriends who insisted the secret was using some horrific smelling man-perfume. These days I just try to sweat less.
- How to make cake – does pancake count?
- How to bake - hiatus
- How to use an oven – hiatus. Also, made harder by not having an oven for most of 2009.
- Normalisation – as I no longer plan to do any programming, normalisation isn’t really a concern
- Programming in Processing – programming is for teenagers and people who want things to do something very specific. That’s not me.
- Enough electronics to get me through – don’t talk to me about your fucking Arduino
- To speak another language - nein. Well, krims-krams. Auspuff. Espresso.
- Speaking another language that most people can’t, but is still useful – I put this in as I have a terrible desire to know what people talking loudly in Chinese are saying. And because a white guy who speaks Chinese is already 65% cooler than before he opened his mouth.
- To be able to identify quotes when I hear them – I already could, but I wasn’t counting “that’s not a moon” “there are four lights” and “I wouldn’t do that if I where you Dave”. Now I am counting.
- How to relate to poetry – it’s just not going to happen. Unless we are talking about Fred Voss.
- Yoga – yup, did that.
- Better awareness of my body - gosh, I wonder why I put this in? Was it the strange stomach pains that turned out to be something deadly? Yeah, probably.
- How to juggle four balls – oh snap! This one I totally nailed.
- Some bar flair; maybe not enough to get a bar job, but enough to show off – Well, I can juggle four balls. I think I can throw a glass bottle around a bit.
- How to give great presentations to groups of people – I feel pretty confident that I can do this. I already gave presentations to upwards of 200 people, and they laughed, so that’s fine.
- How to teach – teaching isn’t important to me in any way.
- I’d love to learn what I’m obsessed with, because it seems like everything – ha! Easy. Done.
- Dancing in public – not really. But then I don’t really go out in public places.
- How to make a neat wordpress theme that works for me – I brought one. Why do everything the hard way?
- The secret of having less stuff- “be poorer”.
- How to ignore it when people really hate you - essential to this was moving 250 miles away. And having a scary life-threatening disease. I find it hard to care about people who don’t care about me now.
- Read less crap – actually, reading crap is very important. Reading crap makes you think “damn it, I could do better than that!”. So scrap no. 29.
- An awareness of literary genre’s outside of SF – I’ve read a lot more stuff recently.
- The best things to do with my damaged knee – wait. It’s over 18 months and it’s a lot better now
- How to have a stable life – what is “a stable life”? At the minute I spend nearly all of my time at my parents house, drinking coffee and generally being slack while I recover. That’s pretty stable, but not what I was going for.
- Writing long form – I have written a few long forms since I made this list, yes.
- Drive a car – absolutely no forward motion on this at all.
- Be tidier – see above
- Personal presentation – I think I can be somewhat truthful here and say that this is a thing we all understand to some extent.
- How to be less attached to physical gadgets – I just ordered an iPhone the other day, so perhaps this is a big fat fail
- Understand what draws me to a person romantically – well, if I understood that, what would be the fun in it?
- How to learn in a structured manner that suits me – again with the learning. Probably something to do with the project I was working on at the time
- Be less self-critical – everybody should do this
- Think of projects that can be completed - I’m probably starting to work on this
- Do more things that I think of – I think I will have some marmalade on toast after writing this. Success!
- Work harder – faster, stronger, fitter? More than ever hour after, our work is never over?
- Learn to sail a boat – I’ve moved to one of the most inland places in the country. Anything boat-related not going to happen
- Swearing with maximum effect – fucking complete.
- Remembering to say sounds like ‘th’ instead of ‘f’ and the ‘r’ in brought – or, “try to say things in the way that previous girlfriends had corrected me”. Insomuch as it helps me to make myself understood yes. In the way that it had been used to make me feel bad about talking? Screw yourself.
- To take ‘away time’ from computers – Back when I was really sick, but I didn’t know, whole days could go past with me stuck to the screen, too tired to move away. These days I get out more and do other, non-computer related things.
- Better mark-making skills – my handwriting is looking pretty neat these days
- Refresh my drawing skills - I’m not sure that I want to draw anymore. It seems somewhat of a distraction to me and my goals.
- Learn how to keep plants alive – hmmmm, nope.
So, I think I did pretty well out of that list. Moreover, I think that making a list isn’t so important to me these days. I’m content to let things develop. But it was nice to look back at that list, that once seemed so intimidating, and note how much of it that I had got done.
Hi Pete, You seem to be doing alright on many of those. The update of number 2 sounds a bit miserable and ungenerous to me. The answer is of course going to be a perpetual mystery to some degree. However I reckon the solution probably has more to do with paying closer attention to no.s 25, 35, a combo of 41 and 42 (think of feasible things and quickly complete them) but mostly 40 – which may have something to do lack of concern for what other people think of you but not quite in the way you put it..
I can see how no.2 might come off as a bit miserablist, but like I said – at the time I wrote it I was really heartbroken! I haven’t suddenly turned into an Ayn Rand fan just because I’ve moved to the other end of the country…
But what has happened is that, removed from a wider culture of people I like and respect, I’ve had to be more concerned with generating self-worth within myself. Anyway, nice to have your comment, I enjoyed your use of referencing.
By my reckoning that’s about 24.5 out of 50? Almost 50%? That’s better than most humans can ever hope to achieve. But why make yourself such an impossibly long to-do list?…x
More 25 always helps. Even some.
I have nowhere to do no. 25. Bedfordshire does not approve of dancing, merely drinking.
Dancing and drinking don’t actually go together at all well. Look for classes somewhere: even salsa is a great way to meet new people, and I know you’ll scoff snootily at that but it is true.
And look what I found! It’s similar to 44, involves 45 by the bucketload and could help with a few more, maybe 32 and 34, who knows…
http://beamishtransport.blogspot.com/2010/09/bedford-steam-fair-at-old-warden.html
Also, look up thephone.coop who are the centre of what used to be the worker co-op movement on Beds which involves parties at which you can definitely dance, and probably also make cake for. It has some interesting types associated with it, you might like them.
My parents used to go salsa dancing, but I think it’s a bit too energetic for me at the minute. And thanks for the other suggestions; I even drove past the Shuttleworth Collection today, and considered what I could do with them. I came to the conclusion that the most I could do at the minute would be to write a long essay about them…
I looked up the phone co-op, but couldn’t see any dancing on the website. They kept talking about phones. It doesn’t matter; I think I’ll spend the winter resting and then try doing things in the Spring. Thanks for your kind suggestions though!
Writing a long essay might be a good start. Go and see them, tell them your circumstances & offer them some volunteering. Even a day a month will help you both.
Phoneco-op is centre of a hub of worker co-op activity throughout Bedfordshire. Your mum/dad will doubtless know others.
I am going to stop this, am starting to sound really boring. Whatever you do have fun, and cheer tf up. ;)
Hi Pete – I was quite touched by your reflections on the items on your list (I’m not normally so soppy! But perhaps it’s because I’m in a little bit of a re-prioritising zone myself at the moment.)
One thing which occurred to me whilst reading your thoughts, and the comments after, is that we all likely carry around some sort of list like this – consciously or unconsciously – saying to ourselves “why do I always do that?” or “I wish I could…”
An idea that interests me at the moment is that, whilst I’m sure we can all work towards some level of “self-improvement”, and give a better account of ourselves, ultimately it is our “failings” and “inadequacies” that create situations where we are forced to seek the help of others – and in working, playing and sharing the company of others we can easier recognise the vital inter-dependent aspect of our human experience (which a super-human would have little need for.)
Some of the things listed, may not be necessary or possible to improve – but at least you have been self-aware enough to recognise them.
J
[...] and a couple even made it up to 100. Recently Pete Hindle, returned to his list of 50 things and updated it with comments as to what had been achieved and his current thoughts on his list. Pete almost died [...]
Pete, you inspired me to finally go and update my list of 100 things to learn. Thank goodness I haven’t pursued this otherwise I’d be stuck working out what to do with the falcon I (apparently) wanted to train.