Physics

  

I won't lie. When I prepared to home school I was really looking forward to it. It was an opportunity to work the grey matter and even learn a few things along the way. Mostly that has been the case. In fairness to the kids they get on with it on their own for the majority of the time. When they get stuck though I am only too happy to intervene.

It's a problem and I like to problem solve. I always have. When I did computer programming as much as I enjoyed the creative process of bringing something to life just from lines of code I also really enjoyed fault finding. If my program did not run as it should or produced an error I liked finding the problem and resolving it. Not always it has to be said. Modern computer languages make the fault finding process a pleasure. At college writing in COBOL it was more like doing spot the difference between pages of code where even a space could kill it. That was mentally draining. There were a few times when meany pupils and a teacher would surround one person's PC trying to find the tiny mistake that was in hiding. 

Today's problem was physics. My initial reaction was to rub my hands with glee. Something new to do, something new to learn. That joy was soon replaced with despair. I just couldn't get it. I don't know if it's age or an underused brain needing a jump start but I just could not work out these processes in my head. I muddled through eventually but didn't feel I had learned anything after. I was just glad to see the back of it and praying that it was an end of it for a long period of time. Its not as if its entirely new. I got a 'B' at high school in Physics. I started higher physics before leaving. It's in there somewhere but that was a very long time ago. 

I have noted in the past few years that my brain isn't working the way it should. A few years ago I got a voucher from my sister-in-law and decided to by a guide to programming in JAVA language. The idea was that I could then start to write apps for phones and maybe find some way either of making a living from it or by being employed remotely to write small apps. And I did it for a bit but it just was not sticking in my head like it used to and I started to get confused by it. I had better luck with programming in Android with Google's own development kit which is free. But even then I got so far and it started to outsmart me. Maybe I am just rusty. I have always liked programming so maybe I should go back to it and work at a slower pace. It might not get me employment but it will keep the grey matter alive with some much needed activity.