Reimagine Your Relationship with Learning

Our education system locked me out of learning at an early age. Not that I was kicked out of the institutions that were trying to teach me, but they were not "trying to teach ME."

I was a poor student in the standards that I was to be judged and scrapped by going to summer school year after year. Today I know I am smart and much more than just smart in fact. Not that I would be able to pass university tests or classes. You see, I learn differently than that. I don't read much, I don't seek out information in traditional ways, but I still learn.

In the early days of my sobriety, I tasked myself with learning. The method I used to go about that I called "bombardment." I would just go and experience things, music, theatre, visual art, documentaries, and I even practiced this with milkshakes, which was a delicious way to learn. I had set up an outline of things I had to do like see 2 plays, 15 art shows, and 6 concerts a month. Those all are art-related and my work at that time was in the visual arts but, what it did, was to teach me how I learn.

I feel very lucky to have stumbled upon this for myself. I know that we as a culture praise a very certain type of learning. That being said, I still find myself wanting praise and acceptance from those traditional institutions. Recently I've been looking deeply at why that is, I think it is because I want to apologize to myself for being fooled into thinking I was dumb for so long. You see if I were to receive praise from these institutions that would, for me, be them admitting they were wrong. That would then give me permission to forgive myself of that belief. However, I'm not going to wait for that.

I love you,