purplerabbits

In my head it’s still the start of term around about now. I am 56 rapidly closing in on 57 and don’t even have the excuse of ever being a teacher, but whatever. Now is a good time (in my head) to start courses, get all my pencils sharpened and jolly well sort things out.

I also get noticeably less happy and active in the winter, to the extent that this start of term energy rarely even lasts up to half term in mid October.

So what should I do with my start of term energy? I don’t want to sign up for too much and then hate myself for not finishing it, but I do want something to do as the nights close in and the heating goes on while I am still lucky enough to be able to afford it.

I have a few options, I mean I have a ton of options if you include my overloaded craft cupboard and the overflow area around it, but I have to discount a lot of that as set dressing. However I have signed up for a couple of things, and have the option of more.

Expressive Therapeutic Art is a weekly class I signed up for and paid for, so I am jolly well going. I have no idea what it will be like, but it sounded less scary than an introductory art class given that I famously cannot draw. It’s at Southbridge, where the pottery is, so I know I can get there OK and go and get a posh coffee afterwards.

Art for Anxiety is a group that meets one afternoon a month. I enjoyed the first few a lot, but am getting a bit less out of it now. It is in Leith, which is an expensive taxi ride away, but the class itself is free, and if I loved it more money wouldn’t be an issue. (Also it gets me to a part of town I don’t see every day.) If I run out of energy for this, or the group stops I can still carry on with the class at Southbridge.

The Pottery User Group is, against all expectation, still staggering along. If I pay my dues I can once again make small things (5-20cm) and wait patiently for them to be fired. I do not feel at all inspired about this, but I am reluctant to let it go completely because if I let my membership lapse someone else will be accepted from the waiting list and I might never get the chance again. I haven't paid up yet, and need to decide soon. The fee is small and I feel I really Should do it, but should I?

And then there’s OpenLearn (https://www.open.edu/openlearn/). There are a whole lot of courses on there I like the look of, from sociolinguistics to anthropology to Golden Age detective fiction. Most of them are for a few weeks but say they take 3-5 hours a week. They would cost me £100 a course or I could just join at £20 a month and get access to loads of them. I can certainly afford to do that but it might make me feel bad when I inevitably don’t get “my money’s worth.”

If I do all of this, plus my job and volunteering, it will definitely be too much. Pottery could just be depressing, Art for Anxiety could be superfluous now I have another art course, Open Learn courses are like actual studying and could be hard.

What would you do?