Learning out loud
embracing change & trying new things
Several years ago, I wrote a funny little essay about technology and the changes I’ve seen over the years. I reminisced about sharing one telephone with one phone number, which was attached to the kitchen wall with a cord that extended perhaps three feet. This was shared by nine people, by the way, when we all lived at home. Neither extended usage nor privacy were even remotely possible.
Contrast that with the default today, in which every adult (and many children) have their own personal phone with their own personal number.
Times have certainly changed. Along with others of my generation and older, I’ve navigated lots of technological changes.
I got my first smartphone in 2011. I’ve been on this planet 55 years, and I’ve only had a smartphone for thirteen of those. That means I lived a whopping 42 years, about 75% of my life to date, without a smart phone. On the other hand - my young adult children got smartphones when they started high school, and it’s the norm for them. Although iPods or tablets or smartphones are not devices that I grew up or came of age with, I’ve adapted. I’ve learned. And while I acknowledge the downsides of such devices, I also recognize their convenience and usefulness. I’ll keep mine.
Likewise, I was thinking of typewriters recently. My daughter and I visited the American Writer’s Museum on a trip to Chicago last month. It’s a small, vibrant, interactive museum that explores and celebrates American literature of all kinds - from song lyrics to poems to novels to speeches and more.
One exhibit at the museum is a collection of typewriters of various vintages, set out for visitor use. My daughter and I sat down to type. And it wasn’t easy. We carefully rolled in the paper, tapped out some words with the clunky, less-than-cooperative letter keys, and moved to the next line using the manual return carriage. I remembered how I used to type 10-20 page papers on my dad’s typewriter during high school. It was a more modern machine than those in the museum. Still, it was far from the ease of flying my fingers across a computer keyboard like I’m doing right now. (Not to mention no “delete” or “backspace” keys! Remember the correction tape?)
Those of us who’ve seen these technological leaps have rolled with the changes. I remember the excitement of the Apple IIe computer lab in high school. And now we can carry a little computer with us wherever we go in the form of a smartphone.
In my post Inventory, from last June, I catalogued some of the changes I experienced since the pandemic began in March of 2020. It was an interesting exercise. Those were years of change and upheaval for most of us.
Changes, whether voluntary or not, strengthen our resilience. I’ll repeat the caveat that this doesn’t mean every situation has a “silver lining” or “everything happens for a reason.” As I’ve said before, I don’t believe that.
I do believe, however, that navigating change and overcoming challenges are experiences that strengthen our openness to trying new things. Like, when I first used an Apple IIe or a smartphone or Substack. I tried and made mistakes and tried again. There are lots of famous quotes about the importance of failure. The bottom line is that we must be willing to try and fail if we want to learn new things. This is an important concept to revisit, especially for recovering perfectionists like me. I wrote more about that in “Making it up as I go.”
It’s encouraging to know that things will never be perfect anyway. Perfection is not attainable for anyone. So why let it be a barrier to trying and creating and putting ourselves out there? I’ve been thinking of this as I learn out loud.
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To my fellow Gen Xers (and other “older” generations), look at the rotary phone up there. We’ve come a long way, baby!
And whatever your age or generation,
whatever your aspiration or hope or dream,
remember…
experiment…
try new things…
make mistakes…
learn out loud!
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What are you learning? What new thing (activity, hobby, skill) do you want to try?
As always, thanks for reading!
With gratitude,
Mary
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P.S. A new thing I’m trying right now is TikTok. I figured I should give it a whirl before they ban it. Are they still trying to ban it? As a storyteller, I thought it might be interesting to try a more visual format. I have plans. If you’re on TikTok, please connect with me there: https://www.tiktok.com/@marymuses