What's the life of a man, any more than a leaf ?

[venta]

Come January, I shall be making my usual bookkeeping post in which I witter tediously about the extent to which I've kept the previous year's resolutions. However, I have a new plan for making resolutions this year... and I need a bit of assistance.

My aim for this year is to acquire twelve new skills - one per month. They are to be things which could be regarded as useful life skills. Now, I'd love to learn to speak Japanese, or to play decent jazz piano from a fakebook, or to learn to ride a horse, but these are clearly abilities I'm unlikely to acquire in a few weeks.

I've already selected some of the skills I shall attempt to acquire. I don't know how to feed or bath a baby, or change a nappy, and I feel I should be able to (learning this obviously requires me to locate a friend who will lend an appropriately sized baby. Offers welcome.) Most of the basic first-aid skills I've learned have fallen out of my head (or changed in the years since I learned them), so I should brush up in that area. I'd like to learn a few basic guitar chords; I've no delusions of learning to play guitar in a month, but being able to keep up with the three-chord trick should (I hope) be manageable.

However, I'm after suggestions to add to my list. As the guitar should suggest, I'm willing to accept a fairly broad definition of 'life skills'; think of it as a list of abilities which today's urbane sophisiticate could be expected to possess. The skill must be plausibly learnable (or its basics graspable) in a few weeks. And I don't wish to get all SMART, but it should be objectively measurable. There should be some goal (a first-aid certificate, a non-wailing baby, and a quick rendition of a few Status Quo numbers) to demonstrate I've achieved some level of competency.

Does anyone else fancy this for the new year ? If so, shout up and we can get compiling a list from which any takers can select their twelve life skills.

Comments

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

I'm happy to teach art skills of various kinds. Pencil drawing, ink pens or acrylic paint are all reasonable options (in roughly increasing order of increasing cost for materials you'd need).

[venta.livejournal.com]

Ooh, that's a very tempting offer. Pen or ink drawing is something I really would like to learn and (despite thinking my drawing is incurably awful) Frances assures me this is rarely the case.

Of course, she says that without seeing an example :)

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Cool! Let me know if it makes the list (in fact I'll probably just see it on this journal) and we can arrange timings and stuff.

(Aside: isn't your second sentence there a horrendous abuse of parenthesis? I thought the sentence needed to make sense with the parenthetical part removed?)

[venta.livejournal.com]

(Aside: yes, I realised that a few minutes ago. Sadly your reply has now rendered it ineditable ;)