Trying out new things can be scary. It can be exciting and challenging and tiring. But most of all it will widen your horizon.
And by that I don’t necessarily mean, that once you tried something new you have to stick doing it regularly. No, maybe you tried something and found it’s not quite for you, so why should you continue doing it? At least, now you have the qualified opinion that it’s not for you. And that’s very valuable too.
In the past few weeks/ months I tried out quite a lot of things that were entirely new to me. I dove into a programming course, I started to go climbing/bouldering and I started tattooing. All things very different from each other, but each thing in itself gave me a new perspective. For the programming thing I have to admit, that it can be quite fun, once you have enough practice to not having to look up every single command anymore and it’s equally satisfying to witness seeing the accomplished final product, if turned out to be exactly how you envisioned it, while working hard on it. But, at the core, I think it’s work that requires far too much problem-detecting and problem-solving skills for me to become something I’d really enjoy doing for a longer time period.
To try out climbing has been on my list for a few years by now, and finally I had the time and the drive to go. And I’m loving it. Considered from a physical activity point of view, it takes some getting used to. I make sure to always warm up beforehand to keep the risk of injury low and I try doing activities for other muscle parts on the days before and after. With that being said, my underarms and fingers/palms still hurt pretty much after every session. What I find far more fascinating about it, is the mental part to it. How you get really competitive and ambitious, challenging yourself with every route you climb, wanting to improve and the triumphant feeling when you do, eventually. By competitive I’m talking about the competition with yourself. I never felt challenged by other people around, quite the contrary actually. Sometimes you feel stuck up there in the wall, and a partner on the ground can provide just the right tip for you to proceed upwards. Or you stand in front of the bouldering route that threw you off three times in a row, wondering how the heck to expand your arms in order to reach the next handle, and then watching someone else do it, gives you the necessary heureka effect. And the feeling when you conquer the route at last: priceless!
Tattooing. Why? Well…though having a few tattoos myself I’m not one of these heavily in-the-scene tattooed persons and don’t aspire to become one, either. But there are many designs, works of art that I absolutely admire, artists I follow on social media and a curiosity brought me to trying it myself. And what can I say? It’s far more difficult than it looks..hahahaa…but it’s a lot of fun, too. It takes A LOT of patience (good thing I practiced that while teaching language classes) and a love for detail. I think, as with most creative works, the artist themselves will probably hardly ever be fully satisfied with their work, but it’s a good thing, since it pushed one to keep working on a skill. The clients satisfaction is what counts here, and not the artist’s perfectionism. I can see myself doing this on a regular basis, but so far I’m really just beginning and I am aware of the amount of practice I’ll need before being decently able to ink living people.
As for trying new things in general: I think there is not a single thing you’ve never tried before that won’t teach you something. If you stick to doing it or not, doesn’t matter at that point, some things we should try alone for the reassurance that it may be something we don’t ever want to do again. Lesson learned. 🙂
And other things we’ll try for the first time and we will ask ourselves why the heck have we waited for so long, if only we had known how much we enjoyed doing it?!