It has been months since my last post. There’s no excuse for this gap in training of course, but explanations, at the very least, are in order.

A lot has happened since my skydiving training in February. First, I started a new job which requires a certain amount of business development. My surplus writing time has been channeled towards pursuits of an entirely different nature. Second, I’m starting to exhaust my initial set of single-serving training options. In the past two years I’ve added many skills to my dossier, but they’ve largely been easy commitments time wise. Firearm proficiency, performance driving, skydiving – all done in a weekend or less.

However, my list of desired skills extend well beyond those that can easily be acquired by the weekend warrior. So, it’s time to commit to acquiring some hard-won competencies. I’m back in the classroom taking French 3 at City University. The embarrassing part is that I should be in French 4 or 5. I’ve studied French off and on since high school, but foreign languages are the ultimate use-it-or-lose-it skill. And linguistic skills aren’t something I come by naturally.

This will be a slog. I’m supplementing with Rosetta Stone and the Duolingo iPad app in hopes that a diversity of choice will appeal to my lacking attention span.

Now where was I?

Fluency awaits!

I’ve never been very adept at picking up languages.

I suspect this is a result of two issues. First, I simply lack natural ability. There’s a handful of people who come by new languages effortlessly. I envy them. The second issue, and likely a compounding one, is that I probably enjoy the idea of learning a foreign language more than I like the learning itself.

It’s not for lack of half-hearted effort.

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