There’s a guitar in my bedroom closet that I’ve been “learning” for three years. It sits behind winter coats and old hiking boots, tuned just enough to sound optimistic when I pull it out every few months. I can play exactly two songs: a mangled version of “Wonderwall” and something that might be “House of the Rising Sun” if you’re feeling generous. This guitar is part of a particular category of my life that I’m becoming fascinated by, the things I’m learning badly, slowly, or not at all, but somehow can’t abandon.
I used to think there were two types of learning: the kind where you commit and get competent, and the kind where you quit. But I’m discovering there’s this weird third space where you persist in a state of beautiful incompetence. You make just enough progress to stay interested but never enough to feel satisfied. It’s messier than I expected, and more honest than either mastery or giving up.
The Photography That Never Clicks
I bought a real camera two years ago because phone photos felt insufficient for the way light hits my coffee cup at 7 AM or how my neighborhood looks when it rains. I read articles about aperture and composition. I watched YouTube videos about the rule of thirds until my eyes glazed over. I can now confidently tell you that f/1.8 creates a shallow depth of field, which sounds impressive until you see my photos.
They’re almost good. There’s something happening in them, a mood, maybe, or an accidental moment, but they’re technically amateur in ways that make me cringe. The horizon tilts slightly in every landscape. My portraits are either too dark or blown out. But here’s the thing: I keep taking them anyway. Last week I spent an entire morning photographing shadows on my kitchen wall, and three of the forty-seven shots had something I couldn’t quite name but definitely felt.
I’m learning that maybe the goal isn’t to become a photographer. Maybe it’s to become someone who notices light differently, who stops walking when the afternoon sun hits a building just right. The camera is just the excuse to pay attention.
Conversations in Broken Spanish
My Spanish exists in fragments. I can order coffee with confidence and ask for directions with less confidence and attempt small talk with my neighbor Luis with what can only be described as linguistic chaos. We’ve been having the same conversation for six months: he asks how I’m doing, I say “bien, bien,” he mentions the weather, I nod enthusiastically and throw in a “sí, muy caliente” regardless of the season.
Duolingo tells me I’m 47% fluent, which feels both generous and insulting. I understand more than I can say, which creates these strange moments where I follow entire conversations but can only contribute nouns and hopeful hand gestures. Last month at the grocery store, an elderly woman asked me something complicated about avocados, and I found myself saying “No sé, pero… aguacates buenos?” while pointing vaguely at the produce display.
The weird part is that these broken exchanges feel more real than the polished conversations I have in English sometimes. There’s something about fumbling through another language that strips away pretense. When you can only communicate in simple sentences, you end up saying simpler, truer things.
The Sourdough That Sometimes Works
My sourdough starter lives in the back of my fridge like a science experiment I’m afraid to check on. Her name is Bertha, yes, I named her, because apparently that’s what sourdough people do, and she’s survived longer than most of my houseplants despite my inconsistent care. Sometimes I feed her and she bubbles happily. Sometimes I forget about her for two weeks and she develops a layer of liquid that looks vaguely threatening.
My bread-making success rate hovers around 30%. When it works, I feel like a domestic goddess who has unlocked ancient secrets. When it doesn’t, I have expensive doorstops and a kitchen that smells like disappointment. Last weekend I tried a new technique I found online, something about folding and timing and ambient temperature, and the result looked like a deflated football with trust issues.
But here’s what I’ve learned about Bertha and me: we’re both alive, both changing, both unpredictable. The bread isn’t really the point anymore. It’s the ritual of checking on something alive, of mixing and waiting and hoping. It’s the way my hands know the feel of properly hydrated dough even when my brain has no idea what went wrong this time.
The Garden That Teaches Patience
I planted tomatoes in March with the confidence of someone who had watched three YouTube videos about companion planting. By July, half were dead, one had produced exactly two cherry tomatoes, and the basil had taken over like it was planning a hostile takeover of the entire planter. The mint I thought I had killed came back stronger and more determined to spread into everything.
My neighbor’s garden looks like a magazine spread. Mine looks like an ongoing negotiation between my intentions and nature’s sense of humor. I’ve learned that watering is more complicated than I thought, that soil quality matters in ways I didn’t anticipate, and that some plants just don’t want to grow for me no matter how carefully I follow the instructions.
But I also learned that the smell of tomato leaves on my hands at the end of the day feels like an accomplishment regardless of the harvest. That watching something grow, even poorly, changes how you think about time. That failure in the garden isn’t really failure, it’s information for next season.
What Bad Learning Actually Teaches
I used to think competence was the only worthwhile goal, that anything less was a waste of time. But these slow, imperfect learning processes teach me something different about growth and patience and what it means to be human. They teach me that some of the most valuable things happen in the space between knowing nothing and knowing enough.
Maybe the point isn’t to master these things. Maybe it’s to stay curious long enough to discover what they’re really teaching you, which is usually something different than what you thought you were learning. My guitar has taught me more about persistence than music. My camera has taught me more about attention than photography. My broken Spanish has taught me more about connection than grammar.
What are you learning badly right now? And what might it be teaching you instead?
