I’m going to issue you a challenge. Do something cool. I don’t really mind what it is. If you can juggle, do that. If you can sing in a baritone well, go ahead, belt out a verse. Doesn’t really matter what, just do it. Done? Okay, good. (Or not, if you didn’t. In which case, you are being lazy and there is a paragraph at the end of this post just for you, lazy people.) So what did you do? There’s lots of things you could have done, but you only did one, right? Because that’s all I asked for. One cool thing, done by you. Who you are will have had an effect on what you do. You might be a fantastic ventriloquist, but you may think that’s really lame, so instead you did a pretty bad Eddie Murphy impression. (Don’t feel bad, my Effie Murphy impression has throat cancer.) This proves two things; one, that cool is a terrible descriptive term and you should never use it if you want a specific result, and more importantly, that everyone [i]can[/i] do something cool.
Lots of things are impressive. If you’re good on any particular instrument, people will find that impressive. Hell, a lot of the time, even if you can only hammer out the first three bars of Fur Elise on piano that can impressive and surprise. But there are more possible talents and tricks out in the world, and we each only know a very bare few of them. Yet to us, our talents aren’t all that impressive. If I was put on the spot like you were, what would I do? Probably sit down in front of my piano and thrash out the Tetris A theme, maybe Savato if I wanted to play something heavier. Perhaps I’d load up I Wanna Be The Guy and (after an hour or so, to be honest) beat the last boss again. Most likely, I’d just keep reading like most of you did to see where this was going.
So what is my point? Well, if to us our own talents are unimpressive, then that means to other people, what they do isn’t all that special either. It’s easy, we say. It’s fairly simple. After a little practice, it becomes subconscious. Second nature. Like riding a bike, expect I don’t fall over the handlebars and break a leg after not doing it for a few years. So what does it mean? Something awesome, in fact. If all the talents we find awesome are easy, what’s to stop us from doing them? Procrastination. Though we may not phrase it like that. “I don’t have the time.” “There are other, more important things to do.” “After I’m finished with this.” Well, bugger that attitude. Let’s do them! Let’s learn how to dance, find some juggling balls, and buy a cookbook. Let’s actually do this.
Now, I’m not going to try and push you into action and do nothing myself. That’s not fair. So here’s the deal. At the end of every week, from now on, I’ll post what I’ve been working on. I’m going to start teaching myself to speak Japanese. I know a little, so I’m going to make it a lot. Come on folks. You don’t need to learn another language, or even commit much time here. Just, start doing what it is you want to be able to do. It’s the only way you’ll ever learn.
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