Inventory, Age 43 5/6

1. Things I can do well but don't really think of as skills despite the fact that it took time (i.e. years) and effort to learn them:

• Touch type with some degree of speed and accuracy
• Write grammatical English
• Read and remember thousands of books and articles in my academic field, their authors and titles, and give a rough idea of their arguments without having to look them up (very useful when talking with colleagues, advising students or designing syllabi)
  
• Design a university-level course and teach it (see previous item)
  
• Converse on a high level about questions of history, theology, hermeneutics, and devotion
• Know where to look for bibliography in fields that I have not studied intensively myself
• Critique an argument and make suggestions on how to improve it (a.k.a. grading, but also thesis advising and peer review)
  
• Read medieval European book hands in manuscript
• Read and translate Latin, plus a few other languages when I need to (mostly German and French)
  
• Design and carry out a research plan
  
• Write a book (at least once; not yet clear whether this is a repeatable skill)

2. Things that I actively practice but still wish I could do better:

• Yoga (since college, more or less daily, with a hiatus of 3 years when my son was younger)
  
• Fencing (you knew that one!)
• Knitting (revived after a hiatus of 12 years; practiced intensively throughout graduate school, say, 6 years)
• Cooking (I can manage a full Thanksgiving dinner but my daily meals are considerable simpler; I have been known to make a full gingerbread house, complete with windows)
  

3. Things that I have practiced in the past with some enthusiasm but which I do not seem inclined to practice now despite the fact that I can do them moderately well:

• Swimming (competitively for 4 years in high school, but never as good as my brother, who is world class)
• Gardening (pots and window boxes, 5 or 6 years, before I started fencing; depressing in Chicago without a place to overwinter the pot plants)
• Drawing (obsessively throughout my childhood, through various courses in college; never good enough to make it out of sketch books though)
• Playing the piano (9-10 years of lessons; never really good enough to play in public; see Draw)
• Square dancing (2-3 years, including first year in college; my mother's passion in her 40s and 50s)
• Making beaded jewelry (2-3 years in college; actually sold some earrings and my mother still wears the necklaces I made)
• Doing math (up to differential equations and vector calculus in college; alas for my son, I've forgotten most of it now)

4. Things that I can do but that I don't think of skills because I don't remember ever actually having to learn them:

• Arrange the furniture (you laugh, but not everyone can do it!)
• Ride a bicycle (not entirely true, I do have vague memories of hurtling down a hill in Nebraska when I was six)
• Read
  
• Ask questions; worry about whether I have found the answers or not
• Make lists

5. Things I wish I could do but am convinced that I can't/can't learn/have no talent for:

• Sing (I was kicked out of our children's church choir by my piano teacher)
• Paint (allied to drawing, which I wish I could do better)
  
• Act (partly satisfied, I suspect, by teaching)
• Write poetry
• Play the violin

6. Things I think I should want to do but don't really:

• Be "more active" in the community (i.e. other than what I do on campus or at church)
• Write a novel
• Travel around the world (although I wouldn't mind some more time in Europe)
• Science (except peripherally insofar as it helps me think about history and religion)

• It's hard having a mid-life crisis when you're basically doing exactly what you hoped and dreamed you would be doing by age 40. And yet, interestingly, it hits anyway. Go figure. I wonder what I'm going to dream about doing next.