Do You Have Your TAPAS Ready?
Remember being a kid and getting the chance to learn something new outside of school? Like piano, dancing, gymnastics, riding lessons, and many others. As a pre-teen your main concern is just learning how to do that one thing…you are not concerned with the time it will take…or the money it will cost. Adults want a safety net…a time frame to get competent, and how much money it will take, and how long before you are unself-conscious about IT.
Do you know that they all require the same things (and talent is NOT one of them). They all require a thought about WHAT you want to accomplish. Winning awards, making money, being respected by your peers, or just for fun, are all valid outcomes. Just try to be honest with yourself. Oh, none of these are easy to do by just buying the materials.
GIDDY UP! Riding a horse is a great hobby offering fitness, cool tack, cowboy hat or Helmet AND a horse. Sure sounds romantic, doesn't it? ESPECIALLY if you have a childhood love of horses…the smells, the sound of the leather creaking are SO memorable. Minimum 40 hours to be comfortable riding on a trail. $35-65+ per hour, $1,400-2,600. Don't forget the required gear (kit). Can't start without several hundred dollars…and it never ends if you stick with it!
PIANO! I can answer this one. YEARS to conquer (well, maybe proficient). Weekly lessons and hours a week of practice. Must have a piano (mine was used), weekly lessons. I started in 2nd grade and continued through high school. Toward the end of high school I was practicing 3-4 hours a day, and was accepted into the University of Arkansas music program, I discovered 3-4 hours a day was just the minimum at this level. Here's the funny part…I had no knowledge of the theory part of music, even though I could play well. AND, art was required in that college of study. Both honestly scared me to death, so I ended up in business school where you didn't have to have all that liberal stuff (and western civ and biology, known flunk-out courses). I gradually lost the technical skill I had worked so hard on.
Fast forward, I decided at age 51 that I'd like to be a painter. I remember still that one art class I took as a Freshman. The class went out to a grassy spot and were to paint a tree. Gah! I struggled to capture the tree, only to have the professor note that he really wanted an image of how the tree made me feel. I can tell you exactly how that tree made me feel…INCOMPETENT!
Children are exposed to after-school activities at great sacrifice to most parents. Most do not progress very far. It is not until we are 50+ that we think about those after-school activities and wonder if we are too old to try again. Empty nest, living alone, medical issues, job changes, etc. can require SOMETHING to fill your time. When daughter Sarah started piano lessons, I began to study alongside her.
After the fire, I chose art. Yes, it took me 15 years to become consistently competent and I meet new challenges every day. I did it the hard way, by myself, digging it out from every artist I encountered and every book or magazine I could read. It is, however, a great activity for anyone at this age because you can "do art" at any age, regardless of physical limitations.
SO, if you have the TAPAS you can conquer a new activity!
T = Time
A = Accountability
P = Practice
A = Action
S = Stick-to-it-tive-ness
xxoo
PS: My Facebook Page is Vicki Ross Art, and my private Facebook Group is Axully Art. All free! Join a group of like-minded folks! You can order anything from Amazon by clicking the Amazon picture in the upper left column. I will get a small commission :)
You got this! Be sure to get my free "Axully Art Roadmap" and learn how I did it. Age 51, empty nest...hell, NO NEST to empty...daughter didn't make it out of our house fire on Christmas morning...and my entire life exploded. Art became my focus, my salvation, my burning desire to learn. Along the way, I discovered that the act of painting gave me peace.
Peace where I could heal. Peace I could laugh again.
