Now that I’ve had my iPad and its various drawing and art apps for about six months, you might hope, if not expect, that I would have gained a certain amount of fluency in the medium. You would, of course, be disappointed in that. I’m still as ignorant a neophyte as ever. But I’m having a good time, and that makes plodding along at my own minimal speed worth my while, all the same. I suppose it could be compared to the childhood love of scribbling and crayons and such excellent things that leads to our continuing to practice for extensive periods over our early years despite being unlikely to become little masters of art for a much longer time yet.
It would be more meaningful to me, I imagine, and to those who know me, if I could extend that youthful courtesy not only to playing with my latest techno-tools for art making but also to other areas of my life’s education, the many in which I have far less patience with learning as slowly as I do and therefore generally end up quitting or making virtually no progress for eons. Imagine if I loved studying personal finance as much as I like scribbling: I might be rolling in wealth by now instead of still struggling to count change when I buy a few groceries. If I had learned to enjoy practicing exercise—any form of exercise at all—I could have been fit and fabulous and looking at living enough more decades that I could learn a vast quantity of other fantastic and exciting things.
But alas, none of that is my nature or my passion. Plodding along and just playing with those things that amaze and amuse me, that’s my style. I may get up a short burst of energy or speed and manage to improve at one thing or another in my repertoire occasionally, but if you’re looking for snappy progress, cast your eyes in any other direction and you’ll have a better chance of seeing something new and inspiring happen. I’ll be right here in my little corner, scrawling with a stylus like a crazed second-grader mauling her coloring book and cackling with delight over the slightest mark that pleases me. Just think how well I make the rest of you look good!
Art-Colored Glasses 
Good reminder to follow our passions! 🙂 Thanks, Brad
Hello! Feel free to watch my new photo album “Roses” Greetings
Thank you, Marko, I will come over and look! 🙂
It’s true! Following one’s passions is a route to fulfillment…but yeah, would’ve been nice if my passions included double-entry bookkeeping
You said it. We don’t get to choose what will be our gifts, only how we use the ones we get—or which skills are worth the fight to develop even though we weren’t born with the ‘gene’! Seems to me that your genes are mightily gifted in any case, so being a little short on the bookkeeping side isn’t exactly being, if you’ll pardon the pun, shortchanged! 😉
xo
PS—I was thinking of you yesterday when someone I was sitting near at dinner was eating something that gave me a tremendous craving for Mamposteao!! 🙂
I’ve never made mamposteao…I really need to start!!!
I think I told you we got instantly addicted to it on our trip in May. Among other treats! And the chefs assured me it’s “easy” to make. 😀
It’s amazing how fun these apps are nowadays. They are like adult Etch-a-Sketches!
Exactly! And Spirographs (I did a couple of illustrations earlier that reminded me of those, too). 😀
xoxo
oh yeahhhh spirographs! that’s fun…now I want one. And a slinky while I’m at it. 🙂
Whoa, a Slinky! I might also have to get hold of Gumby and Poky. Remember them?? Oddball stuff. No wonder I remember ’em. 😉
I do! I had both of them. 🙂
I’ve had my iPad 2 since it was launched in 2011. I’m still learning how to use it — and I worked in data processing for decades. In fact, I recently lost several dozen vacation photo because my iPad doesn’t want to store photos like I think it should. Unfortunately, I lost that argument.
Rats! I’ve had similar lost-data/lost-images fun over the last few years. Had some touch-and-go moments while on this last trip, since I didn’t bring my laptop but decided to go lighter by bringing the iPad; thankfully, I *did* remember to bring my small, portable 1 Terabyte external drive, so I figured out how to jerry-rig my iPad to R’s laptop, transfer all of my zillion photos there, and then transfer them to my external drive. And then erase zillions from both his and my machines. And then load my iPad right back up again. Ha. Something tells me that if I do any trips longer than 2 weeks in the future it might be worth the lugging to get the laptop along. 😉 In any case, I’m very lucky to have machines that are smarter and more compact than ever, but if they’re smarter than *I* am, I guess I’m still not entirely unlimited. 😀 Glad at least that we have sufficient tech to carry on our virtual lives through blogging! Happy, happy summer, John!!