Backstory: Last week I worked with some prompts to come up with tasks that might become Nudges on The List for the re-launch (coming up in September). I was shocked when “3 Things I’m Curious About” yielded only two. What the heck?

So this week I’m going to dig a little deeper and try to find things I’m curious about. I might google random topics online. Maybe I’ll look at maps or pick up a book about reinventing myself. I’ll definitely review class offerings at City College.

What have you always wanted to learn? Was there an academic or career path you let go because it wasn’t “practical”? Is there a skill you’ve always wanted to acquire? Let’s explore those and figure out how to get some of those small steps on our lists for the next round of 52Nudges.

What Happened: I was really nervous about this. Do I feel too old to try new things? Have I given up? Has this whole 52Nudges business been a joke?

Yikes.

I don’t want to put things on The List just to have things on The List. I want each Nudge to be something I’m genuinely curious about, something that makes my heart flutter. But…what?

Time to do some research.

I pulled up the Fall 2019 course schedule for our nearby City College (where, by the way, I have yet to take a class–and it’s free!) and just browsed. Everything that even slightly caught my attention, I wrote it down:

• American Sign Language (Huh. Maybe this year instead of learning to speak a useful or fun phrase, I’ll teach myself how to sign it.)
• Art History (There’s a course titled “Women Through Art History”. Now, it could be a semester full of viewing artistic nudes, which, whatever, or it could be a survey that introduces me to the work of great women artists. Instead of signing up for the class, maybe I google “great women artists” and start borrowing illustrated books from the library to learn more about them and their work.)
• Lost Wax Casting Family (I have absolutely no idea what this is. So I wrote it down to learn more.)
• Films of Alfred Hitchcock (How cool is this? Of course, I would need to do this during daylight hours so as not to set myself up for waking up screaming in the middle of the night. But–fun! And I could simply decide to make a list of all Hitchcock films–or Scorsese, or great female directors, or Academy Award-winning actresses–and watch them on my own through Netflix or the library.)
• History of San Francisco (This! This topic keeps coming up for me, so I am going to figure out some way to learn more about my home city. Walking tours, archives, historic sites, books.)
• Intro to Museum Studies (Not sure if this is an intro course for people who want to become museum directors or–what’s the word?–curators! I had to look that up. But it inspires me to make a list of local museums and go visit them.)

Ah-Hahs: Okay. I feel better about all this. I’m starting to feel excited about what’s coming. There ARE things I want to learn and experience and explore and try and….