Happy Valentines Day and other greetings of the season!

I’ve promised my self that I would visit more people this month and yet the month, like many others, is rapidly disappearing. The good thing about it is that it means that spring is getting closer and closer!! Nothing wrong with that!!

This winter I’m taking a HAM radio class and beginning tap dancing. Unfortunately, I’m going to have to take the radio course over again. Taking 2 classes at once was too much while continuing with my other activities.

I’m enjoying the tap class. My next door neighbor talked me into it. I thought maybe it would be a way to get me to exercise. I already know that I don’t possess any rhythm but I thought it might be fun anyway. During the first lesson, I found out that it also requires balance!!

While standing on one leg, I have to wiggle and tap a pattern with the foot attached to the other leg. After several spastic taps, I feel I’m going to topple over. Maybe if I really work at this, it will help stave off future mental dullness and physical entropy. There’s always that hope. Maybe I can combine it with my HAM radio class and work out a tapping routine where I can do Morse code with my feet while dancing to Frank Sinatra? I don’t think so.

Given this lack of coordination that I have and remembering all my miserably failed efforts to learn to dance through out my life (folk, ballroom, square, etc.), I’ve decided that developing talents means exactly that. If you have a talent, develop it. If you don’t have a talent, don’t torture yourself. I’ve spent a lot of time and frustration trying to learn to sing, dance and otherwise express myself musically. I’m grateful for the exposure and the experience but now I’m just going to call it that without any expectations of anything more.

I’m grateful for my friends who push me into these things. It reminds me of the early lives of the baby sea turtles. The mama turtle comes on shore and lays her eggs in the warm sand. When the babies hatch, they instinctively head for the water. However, for some reason they don’t continue to the water but stop crawling before they get there. It’s only when the others, coming up from behind, bump into them that they start moving again.

If wasn’t for that motivation, none of the little turtles would make it. I wonder about the last ones. There isn’t anyone to bump them. Unless they are unusually determined, they are the ones more likely to be eaten by the cranes or dried up in the sun. I’m grateful to my friends who keep bumping me along and help me gain good experiences and learn new things. Good friends have been my guiding steps through life. I am thankful for them.