"Thou Swell"

This just sucks. Not only not to my taste, but I can barely make myself sing it. Stupid text, half Old English sounding and half 1920s slang, and just horrible. And the tune doesn't save it. Don't make me do this again.

I love learning new things. I always loved learning, even if I wasn't so great at school, per se. I needed to learn things at my own speed, which was often faster or slower than everyone else. Faster when I learned math, for instance, which I love. I really like algebra and calculus especially, so elegant, so fun. Slower when I want to learn things differently, usually in a different direction, or when I couldn't honestly hook it into my life in any useful way. Things like voice lessons were hard in college, since it was genuinely difficult to understand my body and what it could do in this format. My ease of learning in a lot of things made me very lazy and stubborn when the going got tough. And my voice teacher was great, as I've said, she still somehow managed to get some of the basics across to me. A great instructor could turn thing around for the better in other, less important, classes. I took an Electrical Engineering logic course at one point, it was required for my major at the time, and the instructor was this grad student, and he was great. He made this required, not overly difficult course fun, which felt like a gift, at the time. EE 271, a fond memory.

So, I think that's part of the reason that life is more fun these days. Taking piano lessons, voice lessons, massage workshops, writing and singing more, all this has at times seemed like ridiculously overindulgent things to do for myself, not to mention the time and monetary cost. And I realize that I'm getting a bargain, even then. But these things have opened up my mind and body at the same time (particularly effective, that mix), gotten me thinking about things in different combinations, and I know this waking up has positive repercussions in the rest of my life as well. I know that I'm relatively intelligent, and I consider it a requirement to use my brain daily in some useful way, but I think I had gotten into a rut of a sort of predictability of thought and routine. Shaking up the details of what I'm requiring of myself, as well as the bonus feature of taking care of myself as I indulge myself, has been all to the good.