I love learning. I’ve said that many times in this blog, and it’s true. Recently, I was scrolling through my notes app, looking for inspiration to write about. I actually need to get ahead of writing as I am about to go on a cross-country road trip with one of my kiddos. Anyway, I found an idea list I had made. I have so many things I want to learn that when I made this list I was determined to do it all, but in 100 hour increments.

The 100-hour Concept

There is a popular theory that you can become more skilled than 95% of people at most anything with just 100 hours of deliberate practice. This doesn’t make you an expert. That would be the theory behind the 10,000-hour rule. Which is that at 10,000 makes you a world class expert. The 100-hour learning suggests that for only 18 minutes of deliberate study a day, then in one year you will know quite a bit about that particular topic.

My original plan was to break the projects down by week, thinking I could master several things at once. (I have since changed my strategy.) I even wrote a whole schedule in my notes, assigning specific time blocks to each skill and planning to track my hours on an Excel spreadsheet. Looking back, it’s clear I was ambitious, but as these things often do, that ambition quickly turned into paralysis. Faced with so many tasks, I ended up doing none of them.

Spoiler alert: this schedule was wildly over-ambitious, and I do not recommend trying this at home.

The Master Schedule That Paralyzed Me

1. Make excel spreadsheet to track hours for each project.
2. 4 hours a day for 5 days a week for each project (I had two projects listed for this one, master DaVinci Resolve and Blender. I think my plan was to finish them consecutively not at the same time.)
3. 2 hours a day 5 days a week. (I had five projects under this one: practice drawing, practice calligraphy, practice paper modeling, practice keyboards, and practice using my synthesizers.)
4. 1 hour a day 7 days a week (Two projects but didn’t consider this under the 100 hours since they were learning Japanese and learning Korean.)
5. 2 hour a week. One project, practice python coding (I have a data science certification I never used professionally.)

How crazy is that schedule. Here is what I am actually doing. I am writing this blog twice a week. I write notes in my planner or on my note app on my phone. I have been actively practicing my Korean 5 days a week. I am 3 weeks in on that practice schedule. I am adding things when I have time but I am not trying to be strict about it other than my study methods for my language learning.

My New, Sustainable Approach

My study method is simple: I review a new lesson each day. The next day, I review it again and complete the work from the textbooks and workbooks. Then I revisit that lesson again a week later and then again a month later. This spaced repetition is already making a difference. Each day I add a new lesson and practice writing in Hangeul since the letters are somewhat unusual. The strokes for the letters need to be written in a specific order. I watch Kdramas regularly, so I am used to hearing the language, but since I adapted to this learning structure I have been understanding more of what I listen to.

The language system I am using to learn Korean has 10 levels (yes, I am only on level 1 but by the end of summer I should be on level 2-3 at the rate I am learning.) It is called TTMIK – Talk to Me in Korean. I have many of their books and honestly want to own them all since I like books and languages.

So I am actively working on two things, the very things that, months ago, I was stressing about doing because I wanted to do everything all at once.

I realized that a little progress on a few things is infinitely better than looking at my wishlist and getting sidelined by overwhelm. I know I am the one who does this to myself. But right now, those two thingsa re learning Korean and writing this blog, and honestly, I’ve owned this domain for years and am finally using it. That alone feels like a win.

The Road Ahead

I am not just working on my Korean and this blog, I have been quietly piecing together another project, my YouTube Channel with its accompanying website. I plan to launch that one later this summer. It’s educational, the video topics are a unique niche that I study and research. It scratches another creative itch that I have to build and share. I’m not ready to reveal the name or details yet (I like keeping this space separate), but it’s a perfect example of my new philosophy: I’m moving forward, slowly but steadily, rather than trying to build everything at once and burning out.

Your Turn!

How do you schedule all the things you want to accomplish? Have you figured out a way to do it all, share your secrets? Let me know in the comments.

I feel like I should give my readers insight into how my brain works and that might explain why I like learning so much. I am a Gen Xer and it is true we had to leave the house in the morning, and not return until the street lights came on.

But the entire neighborhood was under this same assumption. Have you ever seen Goonies? I hung out with a group of kids (I don’t remember their names since this was when I was younger than 10). We would go find our own adventures.

The Grave That Wasn’t

One time I remember we found a ‘grave’. We wanted to find the reason why the grave was there. We were on a military base and this was just in a random area sort of near a water tower and a baseball field. I think we thought we were the Scooby Doo mystery bunch or something and we made up all these scenarios of who it was and why it was there.

There was a makeshift tombstone made of rotting pieces of wood with the words Eva or Eve written on it. I forget which, but then I seem to recall the name switched from one to the other, or we all just misread it to begin with. We stuck sticks in between the rocks and said we found blood (this was in the desert, so this was just clay I am certain). Anyway, we went on our own clue finding missions around the area trying to determine what this was. If I recall, we found out it was somebody’s dog and not such a secret mission, but you know we were kids and let our imagination flow.

“We let curiosity just be what it was.”

Tadpoles, Trouble, and Being Left Alone

When I was a bit older, we would find small ponds and there would be tadpoles, frog eggs, or baby frogs. We would capture them and we got to see how they transformed from one stage to another. It was fascinating. These weren’t things we did in school. This was because we were left on our own, so we explored our area. Oftentimes we got into trouble because unchecked kids can sometimes get into plenty of mischief. I paid my penance for things I did wrong. My parents weren’t the loving type of parents, but they didn’t shy away from punishment when they felt it was required. And sometimes we truly did.

The Fourth Grade Project That Changed Me

Back to my younger self, when I lived on the military base in the desert, I had a teacher (this would be fourth grade) and she gave us an assignment.

I wish my kids had such an assignment when they were in school. We had to research any topic we wanted. It was just something we were passionate about. At that time, I was passionate about gymnastics so that was my topic. We had to handwrite a 5-page report on our subject in addition to a title page, picture pages, and a bibliography. I was often the kid who was smart, but never did my work because nobody seemed to care at my house. But this project was something I took pride in. I wish I still had it. I remember that was when I learned what the word apparatus meant.

“Nice size word for a 9-year-old to know.”

I took great pride in that assignment and dug in deep to learn about the sport in ways I never knew. This was around the time Nadia Comaneci had her perfect scores in gymnastics at the Olympics in 1976. Many little girls such as myself wanted to be her. I was good at gymnastics but at 10, I was taller than my teacher so a bit too tall to be a competitive gymnast.

So I learned fact-checking in that project and although we can go down rabbit holes quicker now, I recall reading several encyclopedias as my research progressed while writing that report. I think we had to have a minimum of five different resources. Some of this could be remembered wrongly, but the report I wrote and the requirements for it were real. Things I am not sure of were how many resources we needed. It might have only been three resources, but that part isn’t important.

Another childhood school project I recall enjoying was in second grade, when we built a diorama of various indigenous dwellings. We learned about the Navajo people and their pueblos, Plains Indians and their teepees, and how they followed the buffalo to hunt them and use every part so as to not waste the kill. Bones were tools, hide built their teepees and clothes, and I can’t recall what else besides food, but I recall that they used every part of the buffalo. Anyway, we built a diorama of their dwellings and the climate they were mainly from. Although I know there are more tribes, I can only recall learning about those two from that project, probably because they were in or near the area we were living in.

Where Did Your Curiosity Start?

My curiosity went from wanting to find and discover who/what was buried in the grave to deep-diving into a topic I loved at the time. My curiosity at learning or discovering things started at a young age.

Those were the beginnings of my curiosity, and it only grew from there. What do you recall from your youth that reveals your lifelong curiosity? I realize it doesn’t change as you get older. The curiosity is still there to learn things if you embrace that part of yourself.

“We can never know it all, but there is no harm in trying to learn all that we can.”

I am a curious person with a fast mind. But curiosity creates chaos unless I build systems to catch all those ideas. So I keep learning how to organize myself, even if I fail at it repeatedly.

My Planner Graveyard

I have used so many planners, including Covey planners (I even saw him in my early corporate days at a work meeting). I did use my Covey planner when I was working. One of my children talked me into the Erin Condren planners. That one was pretty, but I don’t recall using it regularly. I have used those big desk calendars, and those worked great until I had too much stuff on my desk and it got covered up.

One system I used pretty regularly for a few years came from a seller on Etsy. She made two-page monthly calendars so that when you look at the page, it’s spread across a notebook binder. I still have that one somewhere. It lost its usefulness now that I have no young children anymore to plan their schedules.

In more recent years, I actually followed a tutorial for building my own planner. I used PowerPoint, and the planner was so pretty, I really enjoyed making it. It had flaws that I couldn’t figure out, and alas, it is now a file on my PC that is in my storage unit and not in my current possession in this apartment.

I have also over the years bought digital planners and trackers. But honestly, what I go back to are those little notepads that are half size. I have lists of everything and plan my lists for the next day. But then I have so many little half pads everywhere that I can’t find the one I need in a timely manner. (I do use my Outlook Calendar and my Apple phone calendar for appointments too.) I really like the feel of writing down what I want to do and crossing it off the list. Doing that electronically just doesn’t give me that dopamine hit as much as taking my pink pen (yes, my favorite pens are usually pink with black ink) and crossing off a line on my to-dos.

Well, I am at it again, but let’s see where this one takes us. I bought an undated planner, which is the best kind because you can start and stop whenever, as long as you date the page so you know what went on. (My kids will have a ton of calendars and planners to sift through one day.) My new planner is in a grid formation, I think that’s kind of cool. I wish I was artsy enough to make it look pretty, but alas, I am only a wannabe artist and will probably just use my pen.

I often feel disorganized considering how fast my mind shoots thoughts and ideas at me. But I actually am not. My house has a spot for most things, not a lot of clutter. I purge things often to make sure I don’t end up with too much stuff that has no place to be kept. I was always good about my kids’ sports and events. We were never late to anything, never forgot to show up. The kids were fed as healthily as I could try to feed them.

The Tiny-Chore Method

One thing I do that helps me get through things I really don’t want to do is break up my to-do list into the tiniest accomplishments to feel like progress is made. I do this when I have a cleaning day planned. I hate cleaning, but living in a dirty environment is even worse,  so you just do it. Back to my method: I make a list. It isn’t by room, it’s by chore. My list looks something like this:

• Toilets
• Kitchen sink
• Dishes
• Tub/shower
• Bathroom sink
• Kitchen island
• Mirrors/glass
• Dusting
• Make bed
• Stove top
• Kitchen cupboard wipe
• Bathroom cupboard wipe

Side note: Have you read the book Atomic Habits? I have read it at least twice, maybe three times. My method is essentially that, adding small things to your routine keeps things from getting out of control.

You get the picture. As I work on those, I cross them off, and they all get done. I have used this method for many years. When my children would help with house cleaning, they knew to look at the list on the counter and cross things off once done.

Another thing I do to lessen my stress is when I get up in the morning, I don’t walk past a spot without picking up trash. (In my house, it’s my husband’s tissues, he has super bad allergies, poor guy, and his floss, he’s meticulous about dental health.) I grab water cups from the night before after everyone is awake. I make sure no clothes are left on the floor of the bedroom or bathroom. It takes seconds to pick up and put in the laundry in the hamper and set the dirty cups in the sink. (Don’t worry I clean dishes daily or several times a day.)

Learning about art and history is fun. Learning how to manage my scatter brain? That’s the real challenge.

What Works For You?

Anyway, what methods do you use to keep things from getting out of control? Right now, I am just going to use my new planner to clean up all these notepads…. Fingers crossed it sticks!

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My First Taste of College (At 19)

Over my lifetime, I have taken many college courses. I took my first college course when I was 19. I had just finished my GED, and a few months later I was signing up for college courses.

My first “major” was travel and tourism. (I’ll date myself here.) We had these huge catalogs that listed every airline’s flight plans from all the different airports. I can’t recall if these were only domestic flights or international flights too. I enjoyed looking up that stuff, and I wanted to actually work on a cruise ship as an activities director or be a travel agent.

Cruise Ships, Catalogs, and Crowds

Nowadays, I’m unsure if going on a cruise ship is really worth it. Seeing people stuck on the ships during COVID made me think it’s not such a good idea anymore. I am not a fan of crowds like that. (I love a good concert but generally try to get aisle seats.)

Florida, Accounting, and a High-Risk Pregnancy

So let’s take a walk through my education, it truly has been lifelong. I moved away from where I started taking college courses and wasn’t able to get back to it for a few years. I lived in Florida for maybe 18 months and took a couple classes, but it was sales and some other course I don’t recall.

Then I took an accounting course, actually, I had to drop it twice for different reasons:

• The first time was a bad instructor.
• The second time, the instructor was great, but I had a high-risk pregnancy and had to drop the class because work was more important.

I did take a bunch of classes around this time including ethics and psychology. I really liked those classes. The teacher taught them in a way that really required serious critical thinking skills. (Many topics we discussed are now quite political, so I’ll skip that part.)

Life Gets in the Way (Again)

Then I had my child and was working until she started regular school. This was when I had to quit my corporate job that I loved due to time constraints (daycare hours, school hours, work hours).

So I went back to school again and took quite a few classes. I was getting a dual degree (computer science and mathematics) and doing a good job at it.

The Dual Degree That Almost Happened (Trigonometry Love Story)

I loved trigonometry, though it seems most schools don’t teach it now. My teacher taught us without the expensive TI calculator so we really understood it. He taught with circles vs. triangles, which honestly isn’t too big a difference once you understand.

In another math class, we were taught how to prove theorems. That was intriguing, and I enjoyed doing it.

Side note: I had a neighbor’s daughter who was being homeschooled, and they hired me to teach her geometry. I tried to teach her how to do proofs, but she was a lousy student and would run off if I had to leave the room for any reason.

Anyway, I really enjoyed it.

Then I got pregnant with child number two, and you guessed it, another high-risk pregnancy. (My body didn’t like being pregnant.)

Gathering Credits Across States

This time, we moved right after that one was born. Over the years I stayed home, I took a few accounting classes and finished them. (My teacher thought it should be my major but I did it for other reasons.)

When my youngest reached high school age, I decided to go back to work. So I decided to gather all my credits and work towards my actual degrees.

At this point, I was majoring in sciences at a junior college. This way, all my credits from across the states could be put to use toward my associate degree. Then I went to work on my four-year degree after I received my two-year degree.

Courses I was taking all at once (yes, really):

• Lab Biology
• General Chemistry
• Calculus courses

I had taken organic chemistry years before and really enjoyed it, but that was one of the classes I had to drop due to a high-risk pregnancy.

(That is a heavy load to take all at once.)

My family wasn’t thrilled with the long study days, so I changed my degree to business management and marketing.

Full Circle: Back to Finance

Then I took a finance class, and this triggered my memory of my very first college class. That was the first time someone explained to me about starting to invest when you’re young so you can retire with a nice nest egg. I had never known that concept before, and it was life-changing in a good way.

I have always had some sort of investment working for me since my early-mid 20s.

So I ended up going back to where my very first class took me, finance. My BBA and MSF are both in finance.

Proof That a Dropout Can Do Anything

I can research the heck out of any company, because that was basically my MSF requirement: a two-to-four-page document every week on some new topic, depending on the course.

Although I never had the opportunity to use my degrees, I do not regret getting them. Like anything else, they are proof that a high school dropout can achieve a lot when they set their sights on finishing.

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What about you?

Did you get additional schooling later in life?
What did you learn, or what would you like to learn?

(You are never too late to learn something new.)

My blog needs attention. I will be revising some previous posts over the next week or two and hopefully that will enhance its readability. Today I want to talk about my love of languages. In particular:

• Korean
• German
• Spanish
• French
• Japanese

The Hangeul Paradox

I have been actively working on my Korean. I can read Hangeul, which is the Korean alphabet. I really like it when I understand what I am reading but as with any reading, just because you can read it doesn’t mean you understand it.

Growing Up a Military Brat

I was born overseas due to my father being a military man. I grew up on military bases and was fortunate to live in other countries. When I was very young, I lived in West Germany, (this was before the iron curtain fell), I have photos somewhere of me standing at the wall that separated East and West Germany at the time. Although I left there a couple months before I turned 7, I remember some things from there. For a time, we lived off base and lived downstairs from a friendly German family. (I do not know their names or remember their faces.) I do remember the mom used to take me upstairs to keep me company and give me things to color, and at one time she gave me a toy (like a plushie but made of yarn) octopus. It was a bit itchy, not very cuddly but I loved that thing. Her daughters would make holiday treats for my older sibling and me. I remember for Easter we had an egg hunt in the back yard and the daughters made an Easter nest under the tree in the backyard. I remember it somewhat; it had candy and other treats. I think they left shoes with treats in them outside our door for Christmas too, but I was pretty young. Anyway, back to languages, they were Germans and spoke German and although I can still recall some German which surprises me.

I do not recall speaking it fluently.

(I do have an aunt who said I talked to my Austrian uncle in German when I first moved back to the states, I do not recall those conversations, my mom doubts them too, but who knows, my aunt swears I did.) But from time to time, I can recall some random German phrases or words and I can count in that language.

Bargaining My Way Through Central America

When I was a teenager, I moved to Central America and the country’s main language was Spanish. I already knew a little Spanish because prior to that and after Germany I primarily grew up in the southwestern US. By the time I left, I could do business fairly well (bargaining with the little shops or getting around town using local transportation.) I am not fluent by any standards but can often pick out words when I hear people speaking Spanish or can use what I do know to get my point across.

The French I Abandoned (Sorry, Madame)

What is funny is that the language I took when I was in high school was French. I did very well my first year and was in the French club and really enjoyed learning it. Then when I moved to Central America, I tried for year two. I was behind because all my classmates already knew Spanish and this was their 3^rd language or more who knows. I even had one of them tutor me and he said I know what I am doing but my grades didn’t reflect it, so I bailed on it halfway through the school year and took computers or something I don’t remember.

Passing Notes in Science Class: Japanese for Me, English for Her

While I was living in Central America, my high school, although the school was provided by the US, was an international high school. I made a friend there who was from Japan. We spent science class passing notes to teach me Japanese and for her to work on her English. We shared albums since our music tastes were similar. We spent time at each other’s houses, it was fun. I am in touch with her as adults and she is one of the reasons I want to work on my Japanese and go visit her in Japan. It would be fun take her and her family out for dinner or go sightseeing. I wish I still had those notes we passed back and forth, it was fun.

Yes, we should have been paying attention to the teacher, but it was basic science.

I can’t imagine how hard that school must have been for her and other students like her. All the classes were taught in English, and many of the students weren’t fluent in it.

We Aren’t the Center of the Universe

If I could be a polyglot that would be amazing. Knowing other languages helps you think better because Americans tend to think how the world is only from our point of view and don’t realize we aren’t the center of the universe.

Our realities aren’t their realities, and we should honor and respect that.

 We should learn about other cultures more than we do.

My Global Gaming Friends

Our country is very new compared to others. I used to play an international online game and made a few friends around the world from it. One guy is a lawyer from Turkey but lives in Denmark, another one from Malaysia, a few from the US, but it was very cool. I stayed online friends with a few of them and have much to their annoyance sometimes ask their opinions based on their country’s point of view. I won’t go into details as I stated on my first blog I will not get political on here, but I do enjoy hearing from points of view that are not central to what Americans think.

Now, Your Turn

What languages do you know or would you like to know how to read, write, and speak?

I wrote about art in my last post but I think I want to dive into my wannabe artist self. I always enjoyed art class and took many throughout my youth. What is funny is that I am a logic minded person and I don’t see myself as creative.

I will post random pictures of my artwork from my youth that I kept throughout this post. I actually have an art portfolio of sorts from high school which was a VERY long time ago.

The art teachers who stuck with me (pizza and Toulouse Lautrec)

That one teacher who ordered mo-ped delivery pizza before lunch.

Back then I had various teachers, I remember art teacher would let us order pizza to class, if I remember right, he ordered it himself as the class was right before lunch. (This was not in the US and there was a local pizza restaurant that had mo-ped delivery drivers.)

My favorite artists then and now (Warhol, Lautrec, and Nagel)

Another one of my art teachers I remember gave us a list of artists and we had to pick one and every quarter had to write a report on a different aspect of their career or life. I chose Toulouse Lautrec. I still remember a lot about those reports. I have always like pop art style work. My favorite artist from my teen years was Andy Warhol. Toulouse Lautrec is known for creating poster art for the Moulin Rouge and pictures of can-can girls as well as prostitutes that he was familiar with. So poster art I guess is what those two artists have in common and I like that style.

I was also a fan of Patrick Nagel in the 80s. (If you don’t know who he is he did the Rio album cover by Duran Duran in the 80s and his style was copied quite a bit throughout that decade.)

Here is a fun snippet about my husband. When we first started dating and this might have even been right after our first date, I mentioned to him (early 90s) that I like Nagel’s art. He bought me a framed print and brought it to my work to give me as a gift. It was so odd at the time, but so very sweet and I have never forgotten it. I may still have that print in a box somewhere in a storage unit.

Pastels, acrylic pens, alcohol markers (and a storage unit full of guilt)

As for me, I am just a wanna-be artist. I don’t have a style, nor am I knowledgeable about any technique. I have so many art supplies but feel nervous about wasting them. I have pastels, pens, pencils (colored and graphite), acrylic pens, markers (water based and alcohol based), and if I look into more boxes I will find more supplies but as we all know much of my life is still packed in the storage unit.

As I am writing this, I am contemplating on whether to show off my various artworks. (Recent items and old items.) You can give me your opinion if you like in the comments, I am not going to have hurt feelings as I know I am not a Frida Kahlo or Georgia O’Keeffe.  I wouldn’t create for others just myself and husband if he likes whatever I make.

Sidebar update

On the sidebar I wrote that I was working on a chunky knit blanket, I will be finishing it in the near future as I will be seeing that daughter soon and I want it done for the next time I spend time with her. Then I need to get those same colors again and make one for the other daughter she likes the choice of colors which are sage and cream.

Whisky Update: Glenfiddich 21 vs 18 vs 12.

We found Glenfiddich 21 which was in a cute box that rotates to show the bottle. Although that was the one that we had a Marcellinos in Providence it tasted better there than here. I think Glenfiddich 18 is my favorite so far and I think my husband’s is Glenfiddich 12 although I could be wrong.

Let’s talk

what art projects di you make as a kid and what did you enjoy most. Post in the comments.