That quote by Earnie Larsen is one of my favorites. For me the purpose of goals is to keep me engaged in life. It’s the experience itself that counts, the goals themselves can be flexible. It’s fine to set off on a path, but I would be cheating myself if I were too rigid, if I never took interesting side trips.
For instance, my husband and I are learning a new waltz in round dancing and it has a lot of new steps we have to master. We’re a great believer in homework, especially in cases like this where it’s clear it would take forever if we just relied on the weekly classes. So I asked the instructor for the cue sheet and looked up the descriptions of the steps on the internet.
The instructor also sent us an audio file of the music with him cueing the steps. I transferred it to cassette tape so it would be more portable. I’ll spare you the details but it’s always good mental exercise remembering what steps I need to take and which cables I need to connect.
I also decided I wanted to edit the file to break it down into segments for us to master one at a time. And it would be fun if I could slow the tempo to give us more time to think as we were learning the dance. Those two things took quite a while.
I tried several ideas that didn’t work until I remembered Audacity, a free audio-editing program I tried several years ago. I found it online and download and installed it. I was amazed at how much the authors had improved it and at how user-friendly it was. When I tried to donate money to them I was impressed that their site said:
Income to Audacity is not distributed among previous contributors to Audacity. There are too many people and it would be difficult to do so fairly. Also, nobody contributed code to Audacity expecting money in return. Audacity is developed by volunteers, working in our spare time. Audacity is not shareware, and we do not expect to make any money from it.
Rather, the team of Audacity lead developers will spend the money on items and services that benefit the project as a whole. Money that comes in to the project helps us pay for bandwidth and web hosting, development tools, and audio hardware. In the past we used funds from donations to purchase the Audacity trademark and to subsidize travel costs for Audacity developers to meet for a hackathon, and we plan to do more of these. Our long-term goal is to bring in enough money to hire a full-time developer who could devote all of his/her time to the project and take over some of the administrative, maintenance, and release tasks, freeing volunteers to spend more time on code.
These developers are kindred spirits…they’re doing what they love and sharing it with others. It warms my heart that my little donation could help them get together to interact in person. It made my week.
Learning to do the audio editing wasn’t strictly necessary for learning the new dance. It was a side trip…one definitely worth taking. 🙂
What about you? Have you ever taken great side trips?
We do Scottish Country Dancing. Steps aren’t called out like in Square Dancing. We do visual practice (my kind of learning) or Say it & then Do it. (My husband likes this.)
Last week our best dancer came wearing a skirt (required by dancers in Scotland), & jeans (for warmth) + long sleeved top with a short sleeved DOG JOG t-shirt over that. (BTW She doesn’t own a dog.) She’s let her hair grow & wears a headband.
I plan to be her with a short, flared, low neck, crushed velvet Maroon dress with short sleeved Orange DOG JOG t-shirt. (I don’t own a dog either.) Blue jeans under dress & a headband.
Next week I’ll wear plaid skirt, jacket & blouse, all very different plaids. I don’t want to be boring. (I have a plaid hairband too.)
P.S. She’ll laugh. She’s very outgoing & funny.
She has a 169 I.Q.- Smart people come back with quick funny remarks about whatever is said- like smart comedians.
bikehikebabe,
I did Scottish for a while, before I talked Andy into dancing too. It was fun. Your friend also sounds like fun. 🙂
I would love to see some pictures of you in your outfits.
Yes Jean, I took a side trip in December 2008 and now that trip has become my main journey. From one journey into a side trip and now back on another journey. I am not being mysterious. When my step mother passed away, I invited my father to come and live with us not fully realizing how involved that can get. That is the journey that I am now on.
.-= Rummuser´s last blog ..Praise! =-.
I have some dear relatives who always want to sign up for the “11 countries in 8 days!” type programmed tours. It always sounds horrifying to me. Wandering about into the side alleys, interacting with new acquaintances, and experiencing the unexpected seems much more attractive.
But I don’t know about dancing. That sounds too exotic for me!
.-= Looney´s last blog .. =-.
Rummuser,
It’s too bad your father can’t be more appreciative. It would make things a lot easier and more pleasant.
Looney,
I’m with you…I dislike organized tours. I prefer poking around and exploring.
Isn’t the interweb cool? I Googled “every clod feels a stir of might” and found your site. That’s an interesting side trip itself, which I will now bookmark, but it also makes me grateful for the side trips I’ve been taking in the last couple of months. Thanks for the insight.
dosolare,
Yes, I love it too! It’s my window on the world. Whenever a question comes up I run to the computer and find out all sorts of fascinating things, and meet interesting people.
when I first got on-line…I would spend hours sideways surfing the net and I found a lot of interesting things, I didn’t know was around.
probably found you too at another similar sort of time, Jean 🙂
most of my ‘finds’ have been pretty darn good ones…like finding a whole lot of scientific/academic folks who are into Creativity. I found them through a weavers link – the link took me to this interesting pipe manufacturer who specalised in interesting woods…that led me to the Creativity e-list (now defunct) but that in turn linked me to some interesting people – one in Holland, one Canada and the rest either Europe or America. I have since met 2 of them here in NZ
how that sideways surf occured I will never know…I can’t find the exact pipe site now! And I don’t even know which weaver it was that started that ‘link’ surf journey 🙂
.-= Cathy in NZ´s last blog ..Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds =-.
Cathy,
Yes! I love exploring the internet too. I would love to hear more about the folks who are into creativity. That’s a topic that excites me. At the moment I’m trying to learn to express ideas visually, more specifically via cartoons. Which means I’m starting to learn how to draw. A good use of my second childhood, I would say. 🙂
Tomorrow’s post is a cartoon plus two lines.