My frivolous pursuit is learning High Valyrian.
It’s a completely made up language, invented by George R. R. Martin and developed further for TV.
I loved the sound of it when I heard Rhaenyra and Daemon having a private conversation on House of the Dragon, and thought it would be cool to sound like that, too.
I’ve been putting in the three minutes a day it takes me to finish one lesson for 103 days now.
And I haven’t quit.
I tried switching to learning an actual language that I could use somewhere in the world, but I didn’t even make it three days.
I instantly lost my motivation to keep going.
It’s not that I’m not open or interested in learning yet another language, but that I just don’t have the need or interest for it right now.
What I do have a need for, as I realised, is a frivolous pursuit.
A thing that I can do consistently and for a long time, but that has no pressure to perform.
A thing that doesn’t demand that I go anywhere or do anything with it, despite having goals and a learning plan.
A thing that is frivolous.
A thing that I do just because.
A thing that means nothing to anyone but me.
Because I can, because I feel like it, because it gives me joy.
In those three minutes a day, I’m giving myself a great gift.
I’m making space for myself to be completely free of any kind of performance.
I don’t have to review it for work.
I don’t have to train someone else in it.
I can completely forget about it until 24 hours later when I pick it up again for another three minutes.
There’s a tremendous freedom in learning something that I know I’ll never use anywhere.
It frees me from the performance anxiety that’s so prevalent in everything else.
It’s a little rebellion against this world in which everything is measured and documented for social media as proof of existence.
It’s giving myself permission to slow down and not worry what this skill is gonna look like “on the other end” because there is no final exam, there is no proving to anyone that I’m fluent, almost no one even knows I’m doing this.
I started learning it on a whim.
A few days into it, I realised it was pointless but fun.
That’s when I decided that I’m always going to have at least one frivolous pursuit in my life, because it’s good for the human soul to play.
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