Building a boulder

pile of rocks and swans
Photo: Taken by me in 2022

Building a boulder is like life. You start with one rock, and as you get older, it gets bigger. But if you put too much at once, it might collapse. Then you sometimes want to take one of those rocks and throw it at someone. But you don’t throw it because you’re not a barbarian, and you don’t want to go to prison because of some idiot you can’t stand. The anger is temporary, after all, and you move on. If something doesn’t work, you do something else.

I’ve built many metaphoric boulders in my life, but I’ve always been careful that they don’t collapse. You cannot manage life if you only have good things. It’s better to be cautious than sorry, though. You live longer, too. Many do stupid things when they’re young and regret it later. There is nothing wrong with living an eventless life, but it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t experience things. I have never had a list of what to do before turning a certain age because of what you wanted to do before 30, you can do when you’re 40, and so on. It’s not the end of the world if you don’t experience things. Maybe it wasn’t meant to be. You can’t regret things you have never done. Life hasn’t been worthless even if you haven’t done anything special. Everybody doesn’t want to do things other people do. Life can still be fulfilling if you haven’t travelled, got married, or had any other experiences. If you lived your life without leaving your house, that’s another story. That’s not living, that’s wasting life.

No matter what has happened in my life, I’ve stayed above water. It seems young people today haven’t had a bad experience to handle life, so they get depressed or aggressive because things don’t go their way immediately. Life isn’t about having fun all the time. You need to do boring stuff and have adversity, or you don’t learn and become a stronger person mentally. Building a strong boulder of life will make it more bearable and make the most of it.

Learning is a marathon, not a sprint

study learn know book cover
Made with Canva

Remember when you were a kid and wanted to learn quickly? You wanted things to go smoothly, and you had no patience at all. Learning is a marathon, not a sprint. Most of us want to learn and expect to be experts at once. But life doesn’t work that way. You need to take time to learn, and that’s what’s so fascinating about life. You live and learn all the time and don’t graduate from life.

I love learning new things and even things I already know. There is no harm in repeating what you learned in the past because people have different teaching styles and opinions. You might even get excited again about something you didn’t like when you were younger. In 3rd grade, we had to learn to play the fipple flute (also called recorder). I wasn’t excited to learn the instrument then. But when I got older, I took it up again. I taught myself to play music notes, and now I can play songs by heart. I even learned to play ‘Soft Kitty‘ (the song Sheldon in The Big Bang Theory sang). I just played with the flute some tunes, and then suddenly there the song was. I can play a tune by listening to the sound, and there’s a song. The instrument is easier to play than the piano. I’ve learned the easier music notes, and on the Duolingo app, you can learn music notes on the piano. I’m also learning Norwegian there. It sounds like Swedish but is spelled differently, so it isn’t so hard to learn for me.

I’ve been learning social media marketing lately, which is why I haven’t blogged as often recently. Writing in Finnish has been challenging because I’ve been writing in English so much. I get more written in English than in Finnish. I’m better at writing fiction than about real life. I’m like that little kid who wants to learn, but the results take ages. It feels like I’m wasting my time trying to write something and not getting anything in return. It makes me doubt that I will ever make it as an entrepreneur or that I can’t do anything right. Or that I’m too dull and no one cares. Learning to be patient and not giving up despite feeling disappointed. You also need some luck to make it. But the most important thing is that you learn things you want to learn and not what others want you to. Life is much more fun when you do.