A dozen years ago, when people were publishing books about cooking every recipe in Julia Child’s cookbook or the life-changing results of writing a thank you note a day for a solid year, I decided it would be a great time to start a blog about learning something new. I self-imposed a few rules: it had to be cheap, done in person, and it should be something I had never tried before. Each month would be a new challenge and I was going to write about them on a site called “Kelly Learns.” Secretly, one part of me thought, “this will turn into an amazing book that will become a blockbuster movie starring Julia Roberts” while the other part of me said, “I give you exactly six months before you get bored and stop.”
Turns out the other part of me knows me pretty well. I made it to July before letting the blog drift away to the Great Web Server in the Sky. But like all things on the Internet, nothing is really gone for good. The stories I wrote all those years ago were still hanging around on one of our computer servers and I found them the other day. It made me think this would be a great time to dust off the idea and try again.
We live in a community filled with talented people: painters, musicians, cowboy poets, competitive mountain bikers, and rock climbers. If there’s something you are even slightly interested in learning or trying, I believe you could find someone here to teach you how to do it.
I know this is true because the Community Ed Winter/Spring 2022 catalog just arrived in the mail. I flipped through it and circled classes I might want to take. And while some classes happen during the day when I’m at work, there are plenty of interesting evening or weekend choices.
Maybe I’ll try beginning leatherworking and tooling. I made a leather comb holder in junior high Industrial Arts class that earned me a B+. That’s a talent that could be worth exploring further. Sure, I’ve done it before, which is stretching the rules, but it was 40 years ago.
There’s a two-day exploration of farm life, complete with learning how to make cheese and preserve your own foods—definitely out of my wheelhouse, but it sounds delicious and educational.
There’s a Level 2 billiards class for six weeks, taught by a national champion. Classes on how to write a book and get it published, Genealogy 101, basic German conversation, fermenting foods, martial arts, learning to play piano by ear, belly dancing, balancing your chakras, figuring out when you can retire, overnight trips to Canyon de Chelly.
Here’s what I learned when I wrote the blog all those years ago. There are a lot of things I’m not good at but they were still fun to try. I will never weave another rag rug or raise chickens in my backyard. I don’t have the patience for Japanese woodblock prints. Ballroom dancing was awkward. I was a terrible pole dancer. I’m okay at ping pong. Indoor rock climbing was challenging but fun after I got over my fear of heights.
I took a creative writing class as my first challenge, even though it terrified me to read things I wrote in front of strangers. I made lifelong friends in that group and heard wonderful stories each week from the other writers who were brave enough to share. And if I hadn’t taken that chance all those years ago, you wouldn’t be reading these words right now.
So I’m throwing out the challenge to you this January. Pick up the Community Ed catalog and try something new. Something you might not think you can do or feels out of your comfort zone. It’s only a few hours, and it just might change your life.