Fresh starts and frustrations
The challenges of beginning anew
Howdy! If you’re new around here, welcome to Traipsing About, my newsletter about reclaiming creativity and ditching tired personal paradigms.
Did someone say SPRING?! Mmm, not quite…last night it hit 17 degrees here and snowed six inches. T. Rex is loving it though.
This week’s flashback: If this were between 1837-1920, the heyday of the telegraph, I’d hire an operator to convert this newsletter to Morse code. They’d clack away, remove all my bad jokes (not the T. Rexes, nooo), and send it off. Anywhere from a few seconds to days later, it would arrive.
Hope you have a Morse code operator on staff today: .... . -.-- / -.-- --- ..- / -.- -. --- .-- / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. . ..--..
I jest, I jest. Here’s the newsletter, no Morse expert needed.
This week on Fumbling About, Edition #131:
The strain of starting again
Never too late for an adventure
The good friend test
Traipsing Tidbits:
📚 Revisiting an old fav book series
📧 An autoresponder for the times
🍲 Delicious soup
🎹 Desert island piano album
ICYMI: Last time I wrote about letting go faster and how ditching the stuff that doesn’t serve your current self opens you up to fully embracing current you.
The fumbles (and frustration) of starting over
Recently I let my friend Scott talk me into joining a band. I was so uncomfortable with the idea that I canceled twice, leading to the name The Not Nevers. (We’re not never going to meet!)
Wait…haven’t I been playing piano for 3+ years now? Surely I can bang out a few chords while Scott wows the neighbors with his bawdy vocals.
Perfectionism, my friend. Might as well be a four-letter word!
I’ve focused my piano time on classical (think Chopin or Beethoven), not on pop or rock. My grasp of music theory and technique should allow me to play whatever I want when it comes to popular tunes…but doing it on the fly when I don’t know a song is WHUPPING MY BUTT.
As I said to Chelsea after my last practice session, “One of us is stoked and optimistic; the other one is ready to sell his piano.”
None of this is new to me, as I always chafe at incompetence when I start something. My dad informed me I’ve always been like this.
Approached with a different mindset, there are benefits. As James Clear says,
A powerful combination is being willing to look like a beginner but a dislike for being bad at stuff – this consistently leads to big jumps in new skills."
Lucky for me, I have three opportunties (←reframing) in my life for me right now to be bad at stuff and make progress!
Band practice.
Shifting my language learning from Italian to Spanish.
Playing chess.
What I’m trying to figure out is where the discomfort is instructional or useful, and where I need to back up or change my approach.
The Not Nevers
I love the feeling of playing music with someone else. It’s a whole new arena, one I want to feel comfortable in. Someday, I want the skills to sit down and accompany any singer/instrumentalist to any song, or even sing myself.
However, I’ve realized I’m trying to do too much at once. The skills I’ve developed in classical piano transfer, but only so far. I need to stop being fancy!
No more trying to sight read songs and transpose to a new key on the fly. I’ve gotta learn the song with simple chords, nail down the rhythms and chord changes, and build from there into jazzy, fancy varieties. So far, it’s working better.
Shifting to a new language
When I started Italian lessons, I’d done a week of Duolingo and could say ciao. Talking in Italian felt like my brain was being forcibly extracted from my body in some alien experiment.
However, I just.started.speaking (even if I felt like an idiot). Thanks to that and a learning system, I improved fast enough that two years later I did my Italian citizenship interview in Italian.
My Spanish is way behind. However, I’m tearing off the bandaid and geting to work—back into the discomfort of bumbling phrases and searching for words. Not caring about looking foolish does get easier, I’ve noticed!
Chess
I’ve played chess for years, plus studied openings and tactics a bit. The way positions evolve and games shift on a dime fascinates me. However, it consumes my brain in a way that eats into time I’d rather focus on other hobbies or, you know, things like showering.
As a result, I had to back off from “one move per day” games. They wormed into my brain and I kept rehashing moves, aiming for the perfect one. Instead, I pivoted and only play infrequent games straight through. With a tighter time constraint, I dodge the perfectionism and just play.
***
All in all, I’m trying to just trust the process and focus on daily progress. Whether that’s writing every morning, playing in a band, or speaking a language, me showing up every day is what matters.
As for chess, I can enjoy an occasional game with a friend. Even if my moves are far from perfect.
Allow me a moment to brag about my mom
My mom has lived on the same property in Idaho since 1990. Her four grandkids live 100 feet away and her friend network is rich and deep. She’s in that retired phase of life where one kicks back and chills out.
Except…she just surprised us all!
One day, she told me, “I’m applying for a residency at Upaya, a Zen center in Santa Fe created by a teacher with whom I’ve always wanted to study.” Two weeks later, she rocked her interview and was accepted. Then she decluttered her possessions and readied her place for rent, found a tenant, and BAM, it was the day of her departure.
Enroute to flying to Santa Fe, she overnighted in Seattle and swung by the Italian consulate to get fingerprinted for her passport. Ya know, just casually stacking big life adventures.
And now? She’s as excited as I’ve ever seen her, at ease at Upaya and enjoying her first week.
Oh, and did I mention she’s staying for at least six months? Meditating SIX HOURS per day plus working around the property, whaaat.
We’re never too old to shift up our lives or embark on a big adventure, dear reader!
(If you’re interested, Upaya does a Youtube live stream dharma talk every Wednesday at 4:30 PST. I quite enjoyed the first one I watched.)
What makes a good friend
Highly enjoyable friendships pass Tim Urban’s traffic test: You and the friend are in the car together driving home. If you’re rooting for traffic jams because the conversation and relationship is that good, they pass.
If you encounter traffic and feel a sense of dread (or consider bailing out with a tuck and roll dive), they don’t pass.
Traipsing About Tidbits
Note: none of these are ever affiliate links, just stuff I use, enjoy or admire.
I’m rereading Harry Potter in Italian (I just started book 4) and it’s still so.damn.good! Worth revisiting. For more mature fare, I loved The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler (scifi meets My Octopus Teacher, so good). Please send me your fav recent read!
We all need a good autoresponder in this time of hybrid work from office/home.
This fragrant, delicious mushroom-chickpea soup is perfect for these waning winter days.
Maria João Pires’ version of Chopin’s Nocturnes are a desert island album for me, the perfect intimate recording for reclining in your living room.
Quote of the Week
Dreams are like a compass that points in a general direction, and goals are the islands in the ocean along the way. Goals are just guesses at where to make a home, and when they aren’t right, we try another. It isn’t a death, and it doesn’t negate the dream.
To Shake the Sleeping Self by Jedidiah Jenkins
You’ve reached the end of - .-. .- .. .--. ... .. -. --. / .- -... --- ..- -, newsletter #131.
This week’s unsolicited advice:
Are you avoiding something because you’ll be a beginner? Can you find a way to reframe things so you’ll enjoy the process?
Onward,
Dakota
P.S. I tried translating text into Morse code with ChatGPT and it got about 60% right, whereas this site nailed it. We aren’t at full artificial intelligence yet, folks!
Thanks for reading Traipsing About! I appreciate your time and attention in a world where it’s a precious commodity. If you have a moment, please hit reply and let me know your favorite section, send a book recommendation my way, or let me know what you’re up to.
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Excellent observations on the joys and challenges of being a beginner!
I enjoyed reading your usual interesting post, especially something without references to democracy, Trump or Biden. A nice break, thanks for an entertaining diversión. A Spanish vocabulary word for you, Saludos, Ron