This question keeps popping up in various guises. My standard answer is to play the piano, fence, and maybe speak French fluently. Mostly because whenever I see people doing those things, they look like cool things to be able to do.
As you get older, your ambitions reduce to some really basic things. There was a time when I played the cello and the trumpet for a couple of years, and I was starting to be able to sight-read music. After a couple of years, I stopped learning instruments and with it the skill of reading music.
Now, I am lucky if I can read. If my lenses are not in my eyes or it is not on a screen and zoomable, then it just can’t happen. Any medicine or pill bottles … text so small that I am not sure I would have been able to read it aged six, let alone 65. Old people need to know what it says … they are the target audience.
I used to get annoyed by the stupid things that people did right in front of me. Now, half the population of the world seems to have no common sense and acquired the ability to ignore basic facts. Judging by the leaders they have voted into power over the last decade, it is as though they have lost the ability to discern when someone is appropriate or just a complete heartless moron.
Every single thing I want to do or want to hire someone to do or need to buy seems to be about three times more expensive than I expect it to be. As if someone decided that it was okay to just increase the price of everything. A plumber is a skilled person, and I appreciate a good one when I need them. The fact that I should pay as much as I would for a lawyer who has trained for seven years just because they own a spanner … I’m joking … but you get my point. Hourly rates seem to be based on the idea that you think of a number, double it, and add a nought.
So, maybe the skills I need to master are learning to read very small print, learning infinite patience with the idiots of the world, and learn not to gasp every time I am presented with a bill.
Forget the piano. I would probably only have ever played in hotel bars anyway.