One of my ongoing goals is to learn a new skill each year. One year, I learned how to “keep bees.” I bought everything I needed, built the hives, and had two hives of bees for about five years when I gave them away to another up-and-coming beekeeper. I learned how to make soap and made lots of soap for three years, and then I gave all my soap-making stuff to another soap maker. I bought a wire feed welder and taught myself to weld from YouTube videos. I also taught myself how to paint cars from YouTube and am now painting a fourth car. Over the years, I have picked up a lot of new skills. Some have been pretty simple, like canning fish or making sausage. One of the more complicated ones was building a greenhouse, putting a 400-gallon tank in the ground, and raising Tilapia in an aquaponics system; that was a lot of fun. At the end of last year, when I was writing my new goals for 2024, I was trying to think of a new skill I wanted to learn that would be fun, relaxing, challenging, and good for a guy approaching old age. I have a Pastor friend who is an artist who paints beautiful pictures, mostly of different animals. I know several people in the church who are taking painting lessons, and my sister-in-law is a great artist who gives lessons. I “googled” artistic painting for beginners and found lots of information. One article suggested that I begin with “paint-by-numbers” painting to learn the mechanics of holding and painting with a small brush. I found a ton of information on companies that sold high-quality, expert-level pictures with all the paint and brushes I would need, as well as coaching on how to make a “paint-by-number” look like a “regular painting” by blending the colors inside the “hard lines.”

I have finished my first painting of a collogue of wild animals, and it turned out pretty good by my standards. I have it framed and hanging on the wall next to my recliner. I am working on my second painting of an old guy fishing in a creek with a red 1952 Ford pickup parked on the bank. The Ford pickup I rebuilt was a red 1949, but that is close enough.

I have found that I enjoy this new skill that I am working on; it is very relaxing, a positive distraction from life’s hecticness, and a new skill and a learning experience.