It’s December and for me that means it is “blog every day month” an effort for which I have long since concocted a list of blog-able reflective topics called my December-ish posts each of which should do little more than offer a leaping off point for some rambling writing to fill up my daily blogging quota.

Today that topic is…

What do you want to learn in 2026?

I mean, heck, if I put one more thing on my list of side gigs and hobbies I’m going to burst. 

Art, music, languages, code, swimming, running, cooking, creative writing, and… deep breath… jeeze, I can’t even remember all the little hobby projects and learning adventures I’ve kicked off in the last couple years. Hell, some of the things on that list are just categories for lists of their own. 

It’s almost as if I need to play a little catch up before I dive into anything new.

I mean, that’s never stopped me before, but what I guess I’m saying is that sitting here writing against a blog prompt on a wintery Saturday morning I should probably pause to reflect on the state of my life and available free time before I commit to say, learning to bake French pastries or, um, tackling the mystic art of underwater basket weaving. 

It’s almost as tho I need to learn so skill to focus and organize my learning itself. A kind of meta-learning. You know, answering the age old question of how do I focus and attune my limited attention and energy into productively advancing the skills I have already committed to learning… but, y’know, without adding a whole new field of study and distraction.

Lifelong learning is one of the pillars of my very existence. But I get it. Not everyone looks at a piece of art or tastes an interesting foodstuff or hears an instrument and then reacts with the “hmmm… I wonder if I could learn how to do that” voice in their head. I do, for better or worse. I get this compulsion that gnaws away at me until I read more about it and dig deeper into it and next thing I know I’m finding out that, you know what, learning Japanese can’t be THAT hard or I can get a student violin for ONLY a few hundred dollars. True stories.

But sitting here this morning I have a nudging notion that during my last year of my forties perhaps I should queue myself up for more success in my fifties and learn some kind of   temperance of self-education—that I should study how to study but studying the things I already study with more focus and structure.  It sound so easy when I put it that way, but truly, such a thing could be one of the more difficult subjects I’ve ever had to study. Damn this infinite well of curiosity.  

Deep breath. Again.