Trying on roles

Since he often works weekends and far into the night, Richard booked a day off yesterday and we decided to stay home and putter around. He did a bit of work, watched a movie and learned some new information about cascading style sheets. We both slopped around in comfy clothes, had coffee in Richard's case, tea in mine, and grazed when we got hungry. It was an idyllic day. We've decided that we're both homebodies at heart although we do like to get out and see the world whether it be the fall colours in the city, a hike in the mountains or travel to other parts of the world.

I spent the day glued to the computer, not something I want to do often, but I've been wondering for a while about the possibilities of creating slide shows with the software I have. Yesterday I actually got to sit down and play with it. I created two slide shows which took me hours and hours but that didn't matter. I was learning about software, not because I needed to do something for a class or to make it part of an assignment, but simply because it interested me. I could spend as much or as little time at it as I liked. It was time well spent. Now I have a basic working knowledge and I'll be able to use it whenever I want to create a slide show. I can see doing one for the cycling club or just putting together various photos because I like to look at them. The only feature I haven't played with is narration and that will come up eventually.

One of the huge perks of being retired is that I can learn what I want to learn when I want to learn it. Everyday I'm grateful for the internet and all of the information I have at my fingertips. I could never go back to having to wait for libraries to be open to have a question answered. My parents always valued learning and, even though they didn't have a lot of money, they bought an Encyclopedia Britanica because they thought it had the best information. It wasn't the easiest for a kid to read and when I had trouble they helped me. I learned that you can make headway on most questions if you're willing to put in the time and do the problem-solving. It's not always possible to get the answers you want but it is almost always possible to go on a satisfying exploration.

In education we talk about life-long learning and the basis of that is curiosity. We are so fortunate to live in an information-rich society so that at any time of the day or night we can take steps to have our curiosity satisfied. Of course, we must be very careful about which sources of information we trust and which we don't but that is no different than it was in the print age. The information does come at us much faster and it's often wrapped in much shinier packages.

And so, part of what I do now is to play and that is part of reinventing myself as something other than a teacher. In doing this I'm moving back to my roots in the visual arts and going from a world where people are paramount to a world where things are paramount: cameras, pencils, hand tools, wood, and of course, the objects I can create using my tools. I'm coming to know what Joseph Campbell means when he instructs, "Follow your bliss." What I do now is still very much connected to people in a different way. I hope the the objects and images I create will bring pleasure to those who view and hold them. That thought takes me into another post about artists I admire for their work and for their thoughts about the role of artists in the world. That subject is for another day.