Tangentially related: I began learning the piano last year at 35 and, for obvious reasons I suppose, it feels 100% like I'm learning how to type all over again. But I'm now old enough to really notice and appreciate the progress. Yesterday my left hand was jumping around to different chords without even noticing and I had that moment of, "oh wow it's happening!"
I'm entering this phase of what I'll call "general purpose use" where instead of building the muscle memory for specific "words" and phrases, I'm able to just conjure "words" and phrases in whatever order I want. Reminds me of the jump from Mavis Beacon to actually typing up school reports and whatnot.
> Yesterday my left hand was jumping around to different chords without even noticing and I had that moment of, "oh wow it's happening!"
I had this experience when picking up the VR rhythm game Beat Saber. It felt a lot like learning an instrument. If you're not familiar, Beat Saber is a game where you hold two lightsaber-type swords and slice blocks in specific directions as they fly toward you to the rhythm of a song.
At some point my hands just started moving into the right positions without me even consciously registering every block coming toward me. I have a distinct memory of seeing a block right as it was about to pass me by and thinking that I wouldn't have time to cut it before I realized that I was already doing so. Nowadays the limiting factor is overcoming the physical inertia of my arms in order to move them quickly enough.
I'm entering this phase of what I'll call "general purpose use" where instead of building the muscle memory for specific "words" and phrases, I'm able to just conjure "words" and phrases in whatever order I want. Reminds me of the jump from Mavis Beacon to actually typing up school reports and whatnot.