Wager
“We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”
- John F. Kennedy
Today, I am starting to learn German. I am also not abandoning learning the guitar like the last 2 times. I intend to do both actively (i.e. more often than weekly) for the foreseeable future. This post is a written promise.
Now, you might be wondering if I have a plan or if something sparked such uncompromising claim. The answer to both is no. I am just very tired, it is the middle of the night, and history tells me this is precisely the right time to strike against the voice at the back of your head that keeps saying “maybe later…”.
I missed daily guitar practise for 2 days now by postponing it until it was midnight and I could say it’d be inconvenient to my neighbours. I delayed learning another language for years despite telling others I plan to when asked. I have textbooks, courses, books, all the tools one can imagine. We live in a time of unprecedented possibilities, and I can’t even do what others did in a figurative cave, with a box of scraps.
I will document guitar progress here, and german here. You, whoever you are, have my full permission to email, ping on Discord, or walk over to remind me in any shape or form if I stop for any non-justifiable reason. And I can’t think of many justifiable ones.
This is stupid. There is no way this will work. I would much rather be focusing on planning to play games or read books. And that’s why I’m doing it, and writing on this page. For the off-chance it will.