When I was growing up my mom made clear three things that she wanted me to do:

  1. Learn Spanish.
  2. Stop drinking so much.
  3. Learn to type.

Against my mother’s advice, I took French, kept drinking, and continued learning the hunt-n-peck method on the keyboard. As fate would have it, today I am an alcoholic that works in the landscape industry who spends a significant amount of time writing behind a keyboard.

She might have been onto something.

Last week, I decided to properly learn to type. It’s killing me. I have honestly Googled if you can be too stupid to type (apparently you can be). At forty-two years, I have some serious habits to break. To be honest, I am baffled by how difficult I find typing to be. I am really surprised at how many people know how to do it. I am even more surprised at how many people know how to do it well.

The fact that I am baffled helps me to know that I am going in the right direction.

I recently decided that I wanted to learn a computer programming language. Within the first three pages of the book I was reading, the author said, “Learning a foreign computer language will baffle you initially- this is the reason why everyone is not a computer programmer-  but if you keep trying it will naturally begin to fall into place.”

The author of the programming book went on to point out that when we are six years old we are constantly baffled. We struggle to make sense of the world around us and we are in constant amazement and simultaneous confusion. As we grow older, we become baffled less and less, not necessarily because we know everything, but because we avoid the things which baffle us.

I felt there was wisdom in the author’s words and I certainly can agree that I have a tendency to avoid things that seem complicated. The author’s words really opened my eyes to some things.

I think it’s important for me to always be learning something which I find baffling…and to listen to my mother.