I am doing something very similar. Purchased a Yamaha piano for my daughter's Piano lessons and I want to learn as well. I have no music experience and was wondering if PianoForAll is good for learning the very basics?
Congratulations. I will be checking it out as I am a big fan of FIRE. Also my daughter has 2 cockatiels one for each shoulder. But they usually end up on one as they like to hang out together.
Wow! You just articulated a feeling I have had but could not put my finger on it until I read that. I grew up in a blue-collar Midwest US city that was decimated by the loss of domestic manufacturing. I went to college and got a CS degree and went on to enjoy 2+ decades of the tech boom and was paid well for it. Thus, allowing me and my family move into a different class i.e. white collar, educated, entrepreneurial, class-fluid. But now at middle age I don’t recognize any of my friends from the “old” neighborhood as I have changed so much, we don’t really know each other anymore. Our views on many things are so different we might as well be strangers. But due to being raised in that blue-collar environment my thoughts and ideas sometimes don’t mesh with the new class of people I find myself socializing with now. Which leaves me in some kind of limbo. I don’t fit in with the people from my past, but I don’t fit in with the people of my present.
Even though I am not actively looking for work I am reading Beyond Cracking the Coding Interview. https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Cracking-Coding-Interview-Succ.... It’s a dense read and I find myself oddly attracted to mulling over the questions and trying various solutions. I would be doing yard work, walking, hiking, biking and thinking about how to best solve the question I attempted yesterday. I feel more interested in solving the problems the same way people work crossword puzzles or attempt those 1000-piece jigsaw puzzles than trying to game the interview process.
I am 53 and I have 2 teenage children and work with mostly Millennials and Gen Z, and I can honestly say I prefer hanging out with people younger than me. I have dinner/drinks with various friend groups consisting of 50-60 yr olds and all they seem to do is complain about the following: Health, Politics, Younger People. And the conversation inevitably turns to telling stories of the glory days. When when I am with younger people, I see there is still hope, ambition and energy. I know it’s all part of the aging process but many of these older friends are reluctant to leave their little domains and try anything new. I feel like a 35-year-old trapped in a 50 year old’s body.