Ramblings on ways to make me a smarter person

I have been kicking this idea around for a while, and I wanted to throw it out there for suggestions, criticisms and comments.

As I took my education courses last year, a large focus was on teaching students not content (for example, The Great Gatsby), but strategies so that students could learn how to educate themselves. (Using the Great Gatsby to teach students how to interact with literature on their own).

I am a huge believer in this, and I have always prided myself on being a very fast learner with high retention of skills. Show me something once, twice at the most, and I have it. I think I have excellent tools for educating myself, but I now find I am having difficulty with the second part of life-long learning. What should I learn now? I know how to learn, but am unsure on what to learn. I know enough to know I will never be able to learn everything, so how do I pick and choose in a way that makes me a better person?

So, here is the idea. I want to pick a topic, a topic that interests me but that I have only a passive knowledge of and spend 12 months studying it. And keep a very specific journal of what I am learning, how I am learning it and the impact it is having on me. The topic can be something general, like The Civil War, or something very specific, like the works of Van Gogh. Both topics afford plenty to study, although in very different ways. The Civil War would have to be studied broadly, learning key people, battles and motivations. Van Gogh would be a lot more detailed. Studying every work of art and placing it in chronological, historical, and artistic contexts.

This would obviously be separate and in addition to my other goals in life; be a good father, a good husband, make a movie, make teaching a career, lose a little weight. I have trouble juggling these goals already, so adding one more would be tricky, but I feel like if I can get into a rhythm (which I admit is the tricky part), all of these goals would coalesce into making me a better person. Stronger. Smarter. More aware.

Does this make sense? Has anyone attempted something like this? Any ideas? I really got to thinking about this after I got a really cool CD mix from my friend Chris, containing Christmas songs of the Vietnam War era, because he had been obsessing about Vietnam in the months before Christmas, and the two blending into a very interesting mix of hope and despair.

I want to start August 1st. I need a topic. I need parameters. I need a way of documenting how and what I am learning. Hmmmmm.

I want to begin this August 1. I will see what happens.