I don’t believe we can (or should) ever stop learning.
I’ll never forget a key personnel seminar (from work) that I attended almost fifteen years ago. The teacher’s words stuck with me, and I can’t say who quoted them. She said, “You can either be green and growing, or ripe and rotting.”
I since Googled this quote and found one attributed to Ray Kroc.
There are so many things I want to learn, and I’m not too scared to learn mostly anything (unless it involves jumping out of an airplane). As an author, I love learning new things and relearning old things. I feel that every time I finish a book, I have to relearn to write. A group of people once thought I was crazy for saying that, but I don’t care how good of an author you are, you should never stop learning the writing process.
Sadly, I have put off learning several things, like the guitar. I’ll stop and start several times, and yet the guitar is something I haven’t stuck with for the long haul, even when it is one of the biggest things I want to learn. Although I have every intention of picking it back up again, and when I do, I’ll remember some of the chords I’ve learned.
I’ve probably forgotten more things than I’ve learned.
That’s one thing I love about writing. There is always room to learn. I had to learn to snow ski. I learned about ammonites and ammolites and helicopters and different gems and procedures and oh so many things! I have never stuck by the belief that you should write what you know, because then we are limiting ourselves. We should write what we are able to learn. And we are all capable of learning just about anything we put our mind to!
So what do you want to learn to do? And what are you waiting for?