This Months Project: August 2022 - Ukulele

My family and I spent the bulk of July on the wonderful Greek island Crete, fully submerged in sunshine, fantastic food, culture and R&R.

Decided to go ahead and give myself a summer holiday from the project of the month. I know, I know. Not up to the best start - but I did have some grand plans for August.

I recently decided to make a career change and am not scheduled to start my new role until month end (a.k.a. Monday). This meant that I was in a unique position of actually having some free time to put to good use.

For August, the plan was to run 3k every day on a treadmill, followed by a 3k hike in Elliðaárdalur, a valley ~5 minutes away from our house. I was curious to see what kind of improvements could be made on the running time, as well as my cardio fitness level.

From a stroll in Elliðiaárdalur earlier this summer, when the lupines were in full bloom

First week went amazing. Week two - my whole family came down with covid. None of us got hit very hard, but it did keep me away from the gym for two weeks. When I got back, my stamina was a lot worse than at the beginning of the month. I have gone ahead with running and hiking since, but now it’s basically damage control and doesn’t feel like the semi-scientific project that it was originally intended to be. 

When I started to think about what August’s official project could be instead, and that wrench covid had thrown in my plans, my mind went back to a time when Iceland was in its first heavy lock-down. Life began feeling a bit monotonous, so I decided to put at least 30 minutes every day for 30 days into learning how to play the ukulele. 

Here is a video of day one. Note the lock-down-esque hair-do. This video was not originally recorded for public viewing.. pleasure(?).

It took two years for covid to catch up with our family. Instead of being grumpy about it, I thought it would be a nice tribute to past-Ósk to revisit that same song I attempted to play that first day. I was curious to see what I could do with it now. 

My husband and our younger daughter are the musical geniuses in our family. I have never played an instrument before. Even though I’m not very advanced and my ukuleles have kind of been gathering dust for a few months now, I do know quite a lot of chords and can create my own compositions now. Without that original lockdown I would still be on square one.

To keep the continuity, I went ahead and set my phone up on the piano again and in portrait mode, with that nice backlit upward angle.

Definitely not perfect, but also definitely better!

Looking forward to September and new challenges - including a new project of the month!