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On learning a new skill


So how many new skills have you mastered during this Covid-19? Are you fluent in Latin? French? Turkish? Is your personal brand lighting up Twitter/Instagram/Facebook as you sell the wellness candles you cooked up in the kitchen after you created an online festival but before finishing a new dress made from scraps around the house you can wear when you next meet a friend for ‘exercise’ with a keep cup full of ‘coffee’?

Spoiler, it has wine inside.

Thought so.

But guess what. It seems that if you haven’t managed to generally improve yourself, and a substantial number of people online, during this dire time of unprecedented crappness, then apparently you’re doing it wrong. (Bonus points if said improvement was expressed in a language other than that with which you were born).

Having missed this chance at enlightenment earlier in the Covid-19 mayhem, this week I decided to give it a go. To change up lockdown life for the better. I vowed that no longer would I spend my time lolling around in sweatpants and a twenty-year-old hoodie from my uni gift shop, chatting to friends via Houseparty, one hand holding the phone at the least terrible angle for hair that may or may not have been washed the right number of times since late March, while the other hand grips the stem of a too-full wine glass. No more should my hours be wasted watching TV shows I swore I’d never watch, or fooling myself into thinking I’m watching Terrace House to ‘learn Japanese’. Let’s be real, the world can’t be saved by putting on a face mask or eating a bowl of pasta I didn’t quite cook long enough because while there is plenty of time to cook, who actually wants to spend their time cooking?

With this sense of betterment nipping at my heels I took inspiration from Barrack Obama via Michelle Obama (because why not) and found myself a ‘hole’, a closed off little warren, to hunker down and figure out how I could make the world a better place, and myself a better person. This ‘hole’ turned out to be my bedroom and my bedroom had my box of childhood waiting for my weekly rummage. I wondered if my source of betterment could come from this little box. That the answer to these wasted locked down hours would pop out at me the moment I lifted the lid.

I lifted the lid.

What I found was truly inspired.

My GameBoy! My cool green GameBoy! With Tetrus Blast! And Yoshi’s Cookie!

F*ck it. Who needs to be a better person when you can play your cool green GameBoy from the 90s and remember a better time. (And maybe I’ll still crack Japanese if I watch just one more episode of Terrace House… and by one more I mean all 167 episodes.)

I mean, sure, I'm still trying to get it to work...



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