Trying (difficult) new things

It's interesting - I've made several conscious, committed attempts to broaden my musical and technical horizons over the past couple of years; New instruments (electric upright bass), new tech (not new actually, but new for me - Kyma), studying Objective-C, and others. And what I have learned is that, for the most part, I was already focused on the things I'm meant to focus on for the past 3 decades plus, and if I'd been meant to incorporate any of the above into the sphere of my main working life, I would have very likely done so a long time ago. Now, I don't view any of these experiences, or the attendant hard work they entailed, as a waste - Far from it. One must stretch in order to find out the parameters of one's abilities and interests. But it's very interesting, on the tail end of a lot of serious, exploratory work in the above areas, to discover that you really were already covering all the bases that really make sense for you, and need to be very careful about where you direct your energies.