Hobby of the month

One of my best and worst traits as a human is having flights of fancy in regard to life interests and hobbies. Usually it goes like this: I find a neat topic, dive in head first, read anything and everything I can find on the subject, work out a business plan for it, find out that it's too riddled with liabilities and/or costs to take a risk on, get disinterested, move on to next topic.

Luckily, I've got the common sense to get a steady job and stick to it while persuing all the other things, so I don't feel too guilty about it.

Still, I sometimes wonder what it must be like for those lucky folks who knew, just knew, exactly what they wanted to do with their life, and did it. That has to be a cool feeling.

No regrets, though. I'm pretty happy with myself and the fact that I can usually become pretty decent at whatever it is I want to teach myself about until I get bored with it. For now it's guitar amps, and this one's lasted for quite some time now. Maybe it'll stick!

I get this honest, btw. My mom taught herself the following things from library books alone:

Furniture refinishing: Her pieces are amazingly good. If you ever come visit, check out the bedset in the office/spare bedroom. People can't believe it wasn't professionally redone.

Upholstery: She taught herself how to upholster a couch, and then taught me. Hence, the red velvet love seat in our living room.

Painting (oil, watercolor): Again, it's amazing that she taught herself to do this. She can paint from a photo no problem. That's something I could never do.

Spanish: She got tapes and books and taught herself so well that when we went to Spain, she would sit for hours in the lobby of our hotel just talking to the old men who gathered there to watch soccer. That's pretty freaking cool. And my mom isn't even from the Spanish side of the family!!! :-)

In case you haven't guessed, I'm really proud of my mom. She's sweet and smart, and the most creative person I know. Go mom!