Much to learn

I wrote last week that I've never been bored at home. Maybe I should clarify that to say I've never been bored at home while free to choose my own activity. There are always plenty of interesting things to do if I have the freedom to choose.

Thursday evening, Dave and I made the 45-mile trek to Bloomington, Indiana, our closest shopping area with a mall and bookstores. While looking around at Barnes and Noble, I felt the familiar urge to buy books and learn new stuff. I'm a visual learner. Books are my primary source of learning. And there are so many of them!

Standing in the computer section of the bookstore while Dave selected a book on Postfix, I was drawn to the idea of learning HTML or Java or Perl or C++ or Windows Networking or even Postfix.

If there were a series of books titled, "Master [fill in the blank] in 30 Simple 10-Minute Lessons!" and they delivered on that promise, and I had plenty of money and plenty of 10-minute chunks of time in my day, I would buy one each on all those computer subjects. Then I'd wander off to collect other books from the series on Spanish and woodworking and home decorating and cooking for two and ceramic tile installation and saxophone and drums and music composition/arranging and flower arranging and prayer and dog training and gardening and literature and poetry and Shakespeare and accounting and writing and a couple of dozen more.

Unfortunately, the "if" statements above have not been met. Most subjects can't be mastered so easily. Both money and time are dear. Plus, I'm reminded of a Beatles song called "Junk": "'Buy buy,' says the sign in the shop window; 'Why? why?' says the junk in the yard." I already have piles of how-to books at home that I haven't finished. Why would I need any more?

This week at the library, I was working on a task I do weekly which involves taking tabulated output from a database, manipulating it in a spreadsheet, and printing the results. The steps aren't many but eat up maybe half an hour of my time every week. I decided to see if I could create a macro to help me with the task without investing a lot of time in it. The short answer is no. I once used macros but haven't for several years, which means several versions of the software. I would need to start with the basics and bring my skills up to speed. I'm not sure I could count on saving enough time on my weekly tasks to justify the initial time investment. Even if it would save me substantial time in the long run, I would still need to figure out where to find the time to invest in this learning endeavor. It's like buying a high-efficiency furnace. The fact that it will pay for itself over time in lower heating bills doesn't help with the initial cost. And in this case, I'm not certain there would be a payback.

For now, I've taken on only a few topics for persistent time investment in learning -- Spanish, prayer, the nature of the kingdom of God. Other learning projects drift in and out of my focus but mostly I reject them for lack of time to commit to them.

Still, yesterday at the huge antique show a few miles from here I found "DOS for Dummies" for fifty cents and all my defenses were breached. It's just for reference for those rare occasions when I find myself looking at the c:/ prompt and searching through my limited DOS vocabulary for something intelligent to type. I'm sure I can find room for it on a bookshelf somewhere. Maybe I could study it for, say, 10 minutes a day and actually become proficient at DOS. Or maybe not.

It's probably a good thing I live so far from Barnes and Noble.