I bought a violin.

I'm not entirely sure why I do these things. It goes from "hey, that looks like fun" and progresses to "those movements look almost entirely alien to my body" and finally peak at "student violins aren't very expensive at all," and only afterward do I remember that when we were choosing instruments back in 5th grade, I avoided the violin because everyone said it was relatively difficult. I chose the trumpet, instead.

Now that I've become acquainted with the violin's 17th-century technology--no joke, it's like the Plimoth Plantation of musical instruments--I see that in the general case, everyone was more or less correct.

In my specific case, however, I chose the trumpet and then also had braces for 4 years, and these were the old-school braces where they glue caltrops onto (most relevantly) your incisors for the duration, which amped up the difficulty of the trumpet to where its only competition would have been other horns.

I often do things because they're challenging--

Hmm. It's possible I only do things when they're challenging, unless there's no other choice.

I have my reasons, I guess.