The Parable of the Can Opener, part 2

Here are some skills noted on my resume: Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access, VBA, Jira, Google Cloud Platform, AtScale, Teradata, HANA Studio.

I have developed those, and other skills over the past thirteen years with this employer, and twenty plus years as a working adult; from formal training, to sitting with another person while they showed me; from self-directed research; from countless Google searches; from trying things and breaking things and figuring things out for myself.

Of those skills, here are the ones I would have developed for my own reasons: .

(Okay, that's not exactly true, Excel and VBA are pretty useful for some things I do for fun, and Google Cloud Platform is too nerdy for me to not want to learn about it. But overall my point stands.)

Skills I've learned for my own enjoyment I've learned in the same time frame: .

I genuinely can't think of any. Not a single one.

I thought I picked these three projects in particular because they were a relatively soft start: they're all things I've tinkered with in the past, I know a little bit about each, I wouldn't have to start from scratch.

Those things are true, certainly. But i realized the reason I know something about those things in particular is because they are things that interest me. Writing it out like that it seems blindingly obvious, but it's genuinely escaped me until now.

In the past several years I've stopped reading almost completely, I have given up theatre, I never go out and do anything (though that's been and continues to be an issue for everyone the past year and change).

The past three and next forty-nine weeks are not just about doing things that aren't work, but about learning things I want to know, thinking about things I want to think about, of immersing myself in something of my choosing.

I need to try to exist as a person who does things they want, and not as someone else's can opener.