In 2019, my ambition is to keep learning, of course! Here are three areas I’m planning to focus on this year, along with some reasons for choosing these as my learning projects.

1. German language learning

I’ve now (officially at least) got to where I want to be with German. My C1 certificate exam means that I no longer need to worry about exams, or stress about official recognition for that foreign language. I am multilingual now, and proud!

Before I move on to other languages, though, I want to supercharge my confidence in German. I want to make it a language on par with Polish and English in my head, if possible. I’m talking real fluency, and real joy in immersion in German.

Immediate plans include intensive online practice (Duolingo now has plenty of great stuff, but that’s for another blog post), watching German TV when I’m on my trainer bike (talk about double torture for some…), and lots of German language meetups which I’m happy to have in my town. Further on, I’ll definitely take conversation classes via Skype or Italki. And depending on our budget this year, I may even visit my beloved Vienna for a language course? Mal sehen!

2. Learning to play the piano

This is so new and exciting and unconventional, I don’t even know where to start writing about it! One Saturday morning last year, I brought home a cheap-but-good digital keyboard which was on sale nearby. I’ve got it now, and I’m going to learn how to play it.

This is one of the occasions where online courses and videos can only take you so far. I’ve played around with them, but even though they were fun, they still weren’t the kind of fun I know I can have with the piano. I’ll be taking 1:1 classes, then, because that’s closer to what I want to do with the music.

You see, for me playing is all about the connection, and music can sometimes become the most perfect form of communication. So I want to play with others, which means I’ll hopefully get to learn with others, too! More to follow; for now this is still very early stages.

3. Financial and budget skills: learning to manage money

You may have noticed that the UK is going through a peculiar experiment these days, one called “Brexit”. It’s been on our minds a lot. But amongst all this, we’ve still both managed to stay busy, make sure we’re safe, and – professionally – things have been OK. My goal for this year is also to learn how to manage money, because I want to worry less about Brexit and enjoy the stability a bit more.

This is not brand new knowledge to me; I’ve needed some of the budgeting and financial skills since I set up my business years ago. But now it’s a different game, with slightly different goals.

So I’ll probably be doing lots of my own research and trying to perfect my budgeting game. This one is usually fun to share with others because it’s so immediately usable. Expect some good tools and advice about money passed on in these blog posts!

Those are my 2019 learning goals. I’m hoping for lots of powerful learning adventures with them – this year and whole life long. What are your goals? I’m listening on Twitter!