You make some sense, Chris. One of the things on my “list” was to try wood carving, for example. That has “fail” written all over it for me: manual dexterity, painstaking craft, and dangerous tools 🙂 But crafting wood has always intrigued me, along with leathercraft, as something that you just can’t get all impatient about. And I love the tactile nature of both substances.

Something you probably don’t know about me: when I was between 13 and 15 years old I took up leather carving. You know, the fancy patterns on leather, made with knives and little punches and the like, dying and colouring, stitching, and so on. I used to go to Tandy Leather more than Radio Shack 😉 . I had a whole set of tools, carving knives- the works. I even made a few quasi-decent things: a purse for my Mom, some wallets. But once you get into the more advanced leather carving, you really need to start drawing your own patterns, and I have (and had) no sketching or drawing skills at all. So I sort of stalled there. I’m pretty sure the same thing would apply, maybe even more so, to wood carving.

But right at the moment I’m feeling like it is time to fill in gaps in my, I guess, “classical” knowledge. I feel like I have a ton of contextual awareness of things like, for example, why “argumentation” doesn’t mean two guys shouting at each other, and I have the basic concept that rhetoric, dialectic, and logic have far older and deeper meanings than we usually assign to them. But basically, my knowledge stops there: like the fake buildings and storefronts on a movie set, my knowledge is more appearance than substance, and I’d like to fill in some of the missing structure.

The one “stretch” thing for me in the things I’ve lined up, as in stuff beyond my comfort zone, is taking another stab at the piano. I’m trying a different approach with the piano game thing, and I’ll see how that goes. Right now I’m happily playing “Row row row your boat” and “Bingo” 😉

The wood carving is on my list, but I think before I get into that I’ll need to be retired so I can take art courses and such 🙂