I’ve never believed in the adage that old dogs (or humans) can’t learn new tricks. I’ve had old dogs that learned new tricks! I’ve had dogs that only started learning tricks when they were old!

And I love learning new things. From experience, I know that I suck at many of the new things I learn (remember the leaf watercolor?? or the vision board embroidery?) but I enjoy the process. The excitement of thinking maybe this time will be different and I’ll be GREAT at diving/tote-making/egg-blowing/tie-dying and this new skill will fill my life with joy.

And the process, while often terrifying and confidence-sucking, is what’s so good for you. It’s good for the brain to keep learning new things.

Why?

When you learn new things your brain chemistry changes. The white matter in your brain, called myelin, helps improve performance on a number of tasks. The more people practice a new skill they are learning, the denser the myelin in their brains becomes, which helps them learn even better.

Your learning speed increases. Learning a new skill helps you learn things faster over time. By stimulating neurons in the brain, more neural pathways are formed and electrical impulses travel faster across them as you attempt to process new information. The more pathways that are formed, the faster impulses can travel.

You could stave off dementia. People who learn a new skill are less likely to develop dementia, which has been linked to demyelination of your brain. People who actively learn new skills don’t give their brains a chance to demyelinate, and their neural pathways are ready for new impulses to travel along them.

But perhaps the most important reason of all is that learning something new can make you happier. It can give you a sense of accomplishment and pride…and those things are never bad at any age.

SO. All that said, I am currently taking an online course in video editing. I have been getting more and more interested in video the past few years but the editing tools are just overwhelming to me. I’m amazed by the people who are self-taught, because none of the programs are intuitive or user-friendly. But the courses are usually expensive, or far away, or whatever. But now, by the grace of covid-19, I found a reasonably-priced online course.

It’s not about creating video, just editing. But it’s a start.

So let me present to you my before project – don’t worry, it’s under 2 minutes – it’s very simple and really Not Good. But it’s my starting point. It can only get better from here.

The Quiet Morning

Please be kind. The point, really, is about learning new things. Always.

What are you learning??