You Might Learn Something
Change is inevitable but never easy
Today has been a day of busily trying to get things done, here, there, and everywhere. For that matter, this week has been like this. One of the things I made the time for was a workshop on cover design in the Book Club with Spikes discord. My object there is to teach people how to do it for themselves, or at the very least what to look for when hiring it done. Looking at art, font, layout, color selections, it can get quite complex and when it’s done well, people say ‘oh, I never judge a book by it’s cover.’ Which is patently not true, only they aren’t lying. They see it, and make a judgement so quickly it’s unconscious. They aren’t going to pick up a book with nothing on the cover other than plain text, unless the author is very well known and very good. That’s no way to discover a new author, though, and stagnant reading is boring (also, you run out of books).
This isn’t a post about cover art, though. That’s better served in a running discussion where I can show and tell and answer questions on the fly. This is a post about learning, and how everything you learn you are likely to have to re-learn again. Sometimes, because it's now wrong, like cover art. Styles change, so what worked ten years ago may very well not work at all, and actually repel readers, if you don’t change and keep up with the trends. Sometimes you have to learn it again because you forgot it. Sometimes, you got too confident with what you knew, and got sloppy, and cut yourself, and then you go back to treating the knife like it’s sharp again.
There is a well-known connection between brain plasticity and learning new things. We can learn, because we are learning and have been learning. When we stop accepting knowledge and seeking it out, we stop being able to. I was out watering the garden this evening, and making sure the newly planted things got a good soak as it was wet when I planted, but we’ve had a couple of dry days. I’ll have to go back out, because one plant in a pot full of nursery potting soil has got so dry it won’t accept water. It just beads up and runs off. I’ll have to soak it and make sure it’s not allowed to go that long again. Brains are like that. They shrivel like a walnut if you neglect them, in a manner of speaking.
It’s easy, to stop learning. Er. Let me try that again. I’ve never managed to stop learning. I’m incorrigibly curious about all manner of things, most of which are useless for me to know. Well, they seem like that at the time. It’s easy to be undisciplined in my absorption of knowledge. And it’s easy to let life and time slip by when you are focused on being busy and overwhelmed with it all. So I can see how it would be easy to stop learning. I know right now I feel the need to be more disciplined about what I’m learning. Try to learn more that will be applicable to career.
I don’t, by the way, mean academic learning here. Not always. There’s a time and a place for that. I’d love to go back and pursue that PhD I’ve always dreamed of. (Augochlora pura and other native pollinators, le sigh, or taxonomy… ) At this point such a thing would purely be an exercise in vanity and I can afford neither the time nor the money. So I shall content myself with the Naturalist class, and finding a way to become a citizen scientist, since I’m too old to be the professional sort.
There are as many ways to learn and keep the brain active as there are people. Despite the theories on things like kinetic learning versus aural, and so forth, we all retain data differently, and that changes, too. I preferred text over all else for most of my life. Some skills, I’ve learned, need the hands-on component to truly comprehend and retain them. This is why there are lab classes parallel to the book classes. In an informal setting, learning by doing sets the information more deeply. I’ve come to think the best way to really learn something is following the ‘see one, do one, teach one’ modality. I’ve been told that is how the military does it. I know the best jobs I have worked took that approach to training.
Earlier today I wrote something from memory about the Blarney stone. I haven’t been there in almost 30 years, so my memory is muted and glowing with sunshine and flowers. It probably wasn’t sunny, but that’s how my memory has it. I loved Ireland, for all the few days I saw it, and the chance to kiss the stone was something right out of a storybook for me. I didn’t go to look up the reality. I didn’t want to know how it’s changed, or my memory has changed. I wanted it to be that joyous memory of my Dad and grandparents, and not the later-truths that rub off all the silver plating and reveal the pot metal holding it all up.
Sometimes, you want to forget, so you can move on and change and learn new things. Some things, you have to learn even if you don’t want to know. Some days, you go the whole day learning and the brain is full and threatening to drip out the ears, and others you are so far down in your rut that there’s not even a glimpse of the horizon with all it’s promise of unending movement and adventure out there. Those are the days I try to learn something, even if it’s just how to mix better potting soil that doesn’t dry into a water-repellant cake like a brain left on the shelf for too long. Open a book, watch a video, make food from scratch without a recipe. Water your brain!