Today I had my annual review at work, and it was glowing, but unfortunately it was at the same time as a lecture given by a native Irish speaker. The lecture was recorded, so I should be able to watch it later. After work, I picked up my car from the transfer point and headed back downtown because my Irish teacher was bringing the native speaker to dinner at Himal Chuli. Three of us from our class also came, so this poor young Irish guy had to have dinner with four middle-aged women. Two of us were kind of quiet, mostly listening, while the other three jabbered away in Irish. Even when I tried to say something, nobody understood me because of my horrible pronunciation. Still, it was a lot of fun.
The thing that really stood out to me from this encounter is how I don't seem to be able to focus on anything because everything fascinates me. The other women are all really into Irish language and have gone to Ireland to study it. (Though to be fair, one of them is originally from Ireland, so she has family over there to visit.) I am interested in the Irish language, sure, but I'm also interested in playing the ukulele, but not as much as the people in the group I played with, where that was all they did. It sometimes surprises me how all-encompassing hobbies are for other people, but maybe I'm the odd one out. If I could settle down and focus on something, maybe I'd actually get good at it. All those years of singing in church choirs did leave me with some fairly decent singing skills, so maybe that was my focus for years. That had a good blend of music and religion to satisfy a couple of my biggest interests. But even with that, after many years I started to lose interest, quit one choir, and rarely attended practice for the other one. It just seems like I would join a group, like the early music group I was in years ago, and then they would want me to commit all my free time to that. Now the Irish group is asking me if I want to go to Ireland this summer to study Irish. I mean, sure, in theory, but I used up a lot of vacation time on our recent trip, and I hate airplanes. I'm fine just putting in my few minutes a day on DuoLingo. Speaking of which, I have another brag:
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