Learning
I love learning. I always have, though I think school got in the way a bit (I was home-educated for a few years and formal school definitely ate into my love of learning somewhat, though university was much better).
I don’t think I have ever stopped learning to some degree or other. I went to evening classes between school and university (didn’t get the A levels I needed - part of the whole school getting in the way thing). I went to evening classes after university to learn more (not that I did well in the actual exams, where I took them, but I still learnt a bunch of stuff). I did an Open University course (and almost got an MSc in Software Development – but stopped when I was pregnant as I was completely and utterly exhausted the whole time and couldn’t do the extra brain work).
I am almost always learning or improving on a language. I have been learning languages since I was seven and my mum and I discovered a leaflet in the library for an Esperanto correspondence course. We learnt it and hitch-hiked around Europe attending conferences and meeting other Esperantists. Then I moved on to French. Then we lived in Spain for a year. And then I moved on to German before I went to secondary school. Where I continued with French and German and did a year of Spanish. I did a degree in French (alongside Publishing) and also, as it was a modular degree, squeezed in a year of Italian. I have tried to learn Welsh, Russian, Korean and Japanese but found most of them a bit too hard, so mainly stick with romance languages. Since Duolingo came along I have dipped in and out of a few and continued with Italian a fair bit and am a good way into the Portuguese course. Not sure what will be next after Portuguese, but I can’t imagine a time when I’m not actively learning and improving languages in some way.
When not doing formal learning, I surround myself with books on a particular subject – for years it was software development, programming, and computer aided design. Then it was writing. Then HTML and CSS… I have always learnt and built on existing learning in my publishing career – always love learning a new platform for building quizzes or a new project management tool and so on. I’ve also dug into philosophy, psychology, sociology and history in various ways. (Oh, and I frequently get to edit textbooks or digital learning resources on a variety of secondary-level subjects and lots of it seeps in. Secondary education is generally sooooooo much more interesting than when I was there.)
And for the last ten years I have been learning about pattern design and illustration. I have taken many courses. I have two bookshelves full of books about the topics and reference books and books about art in general. I have a Skillshare subscription and make prodigious use of it. I listen to podcasts. I am in a few different memberships. And I have been using what I learnt to earn money (as I have done with much of the other learning, now I think about it - I pivoted to mostly digital publishing work early on in the business and spent a good few years making money from creating CD interfaces; I made money from blogging for a while…) and will hopefully increase that more and more until it provides the bulk of my income up to and well into what would normally be retirement age.
This week I started a new course/programme (that I was fortunate enough to win a place on) with the Inky Goodness Collective. It’s called Make Your Mark and it’s about helping illustrators to get really solid at making money from their work - covering different markets, marketing and a bunch of stuff. Last night was the first class/workshop and I came out of it feeling energised and engaged and raring to go. And that’s one of the best things about learning of any kind - getting fired up and excited about what you are learning. While I of course hope that the course will be a game changer for me and I will come out of it with the ability to hugely boost the part of my income that comes from illustration, I know that I will have an enjoyable and exciting focus for the next few months, which will be wonderful enough in and of itself.
Do you love learning? What is it about learning that excites you - is it the subject itself or just the act of taking in new knowledge? What are you learning at the moment? Do you happily spend money on learning or do you cobble your own curriculum together from free online resources?