And I have been doing some of the quizzes on Sporcle.com. Some of them are really useful, like trying to find all the countries of Africa or Asia without any lines at all. You have to start with easy ones like China or Japan, and work your way in, typically with lots of errors. I still have major problems with Inner Asia.
And it hit me that it might be fun to have a Country of the Week, where I read a couple articles about its history, and make one of its dishes. Every recipe you can imagine is on the internet.
This week is Bulgaria, and the dish is Ljutenitsa, which is a red pepper relish. Good fun in my world.
Then I was like: why not listen to a play by Shakespeare every week too? It’s about 3 hours, give or take, of audio. Most people watch that much TV every night. As I think I mentioned, I did “A Winter’s Tale” this week. That was an odd play. I underline the lines I recognize. A merry heart goes all day was from there (I may have slightly misquoted it).
Then I thought: why not listen to some classic piece of music, too, like the major jazz records of the 20th century. Devote 45 minutes to it. 45 minutes of listening to music never killed anyone, I don’t think. So I listened to Dave Brubek’s “Time Out” twice. Now I’m on John Coltrane’s “Blue Train”. All this stuff is available free, with ads, and ad-free with only a minor cost from Apple or Spotify.
This is a nice hobby, one I expect to stick with for some time. We live in an Information Age, I am told. It seems to mostly get used to track our every move, but why not apply it to personal growth?