Learning

I’ve been basically working on learning two new things:

  • Wingfoiling
  • Unity

It’s nice to actually have a more limited list of things to focus on, because otherwise I end up dividing my attention too much & not really being able to make progress on anything.

Unity’s been great because I can do it while the kids are occupied with school, but I can still be near enough to be available if they need me. There are so many tutorials that it’s straightforward to learn, and finding out that Bolt is essentially a clone of Unreal’s Blueprint has made things WAY more accessible for me.

With Wingfoiling, the big challenge has been to get up on my feet on the foil board, which is WAY less stable than the stand up paddle board I had been using. I had the good fortune to be able to borrow another person’s slightly larger board (140l vs 130l), and HOLY SHIT it makes a huge difference. I was able to get on my feet basically immediately on his board, where I’d been struggling for days to figure out how to stand up on mine.

I did pick up some technique from the 10 minutes I spent on the larger board, and then was able to stand up on mine (briefly), but I’m psyched to see if a day or two later, something’s baked in my brain that’ll help me out – basically, the thing was that in light wind, I’d been trying to stand up from a kneeling-on-one-knee position, but instead, now I’m essentially trying to stand up from a squat – which is probably not long-term the right way to do it, but in light wind, where I’m not getting much lift from the wing, it gets me on my feet.

It’s nice to have a few things to focus on that feel like long-term investments, as well – learning Unity is clearly going to serve me for years, and Wingfoiling has been really great exercise. That & open-water swimming & I’m definitely getting stronger and less flobbery.

Grey & glassy on a Sunday morning

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