Beginner's Luck

Welcome to Shane's Brain Space

I'll be posting a smattering of content here, involving topics such as climate, policy, music, art, science, current events, and history. There's often too much going on in my brain, so this is an attempt to organize my thoughts and publish some concrete, coherent products of all that thinking I do. We all experience the world differently, but perhaps you can relate to my thoughts; if not, I welcome you to enlighten me about your experience.

Before going any further, I need to shed light to some precursory information.

1. I am a white male living in the United States, and that comes with privilege, both tangible and innate. While I avoid using that privilege to my benefit, sometimes I am blind to something that hasn't been brought to my attention before. If my takes offend you, it was not intentional, and I would gladly hear you out while addressing my own misconceptions. 
2. The above being said, I do not tolerate hate, prejudice, bigotry, or other forms of inhumanity. This life is about loving others and spreading light wherever you go. 
3. My home base is in San Diego, CA, on colonized Kumeyaay land. The Kumeyaay are a tribe of native people who prioritized living in balance with nature and each other. I thank them for their stewardship of these lands for millenia, and mourn that their home was violently overrun by Spanish Catholic missionaries. 
4. I am a weird dude -- I'm a 6'8" long-haired hippy scientist musician with a big heart for others and a healthy side of ADHD. I totally understand that my content may seem out-there, irrelevant, abstract, or off-base. That's okay for two reasons: it was intentional, or it's something I can learn from. 
5. Life is a wave, with peaks and valleys. Don't resent the valleys for not being peaks; just go with the flow, baby :)

I find many things fascinating and enjoy learning about the basics, the higher level applications, and the connections they share with other things. I hyper-fixate long enough to satisfy my curiosity, but there's often no telling whether I'll revisit that rabbit hole of things I learned. This blog and its branches will provide a structured opportunity to gestate, curate, and share the cream of what crops up. 

Without further ado, let's get to the first post. 

Beginner's Luck

Every time I try something new, there's a small chance I'm gonna do pretty well for a beginner. Unfortunately, there's a much bigger chance I absolutely suck at it and fail completely. 

Those failures used to discourage me from trying much further when I was a kid -- since I was succeeding at those other things, I'd simply stick with them instead. It got to a point where I doubted my ability to do anything new or challenging, and I'd play the same video game over and over, stick with reading instead of writing, and climb the same trees to the same height every time. 

I ended up missing out on activities, experiences, and memories that my friends got to have, simply because I abdicated. There was one critical nugget of wisdom I lacked that held me back: 

You're not supposed to be good at everything the first time.

An example that resonates in my life is music; I've always loved listening to music, drumming and singing along, but I never stuck with guitar or practiced drumming enough to convince my parents it was more than a passing fixation. In college, I had a eureka moment that made all the tiny tastes of music theory in my past mesh together into the whole picture, and I told myself somehow I was gonna learn how to make music of some kind. 

My first song was trash! When I say trash, I mean throw-it-into-the-sun-and-never-think-about-it-again trash. I've spent the past seven years googling, practicing, watching tutorials, and goofing around with the tools I've invested in, and as a result, I prefer even my half-baked musical ideas to some of the "best" music out there. 

My path through music has taught me some valuable lessons, but the most important so far is to never deny yourself the opportunity to grow. Imagine an acorn sitting in fertile soil just after a rainstorm, and it simply says "Hmmm, nah, no thanks. I'm not gonna grow today." How foolish!

Putting yourself out there to try something new is hard. There could be fear, anxiety, or shame at play, so it's understandable that new things might not be the first option for consuming your free time. Look beyond those first few flubs, though, and you might have found a favorite new hobby. 

This is my first blog post, and I'd be lying if I said there wasn't some fear about putting my thoughts in an archive on the internet. It's only the first stepping stone across this eternal pond, but I can't get to the second one from the shore. 

SBC