Ask HN: As an engineer what art forms should I learn

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematics_of_paper_folding#F...

[2]: https://langorigami.com/article/treemaker/

Drawing was my first love.

I still enjoy writing, but now mainly nonfiction.

I am not much of a musician. I can play the drums a bit. But I have heard that music is highly mathematical. So it might appeal to analytical people more than they might first guess.

Writing a novel was pure therapy for me when I wasn't sure what continent I was going to be living on in a few months. Short stories (http://madhadron.com/fiction.html) have been an ongoing source of pleasure, as I giggle my way through my imagination.

Music was rather more than a hobby for many years, but even now I love noodling at it. Today I arranged Lachrimae for solo violin, while I'll play at an open mic night at work in a few weeks...followed by Cohen's Hallelujah accompanied on the ukelele. Did I enjoy the couple hours I spent building the ukelele part? Absolutely.

On the other hand, drawing never did anything for me. I have a couple of sketches in my files that I'm quite proud of as accomplishments, but the impulses that make it enriching seem to come to me only once every few years as opposed to as part of my daily life. Similarly, I learned woodworking from my father and have built a number of lovely things for our home, but unlike my father, it's not something that I particularly like to go down and noodle at.

I have enjoyed the community from various kinds of dancing, occasionally do a little choreography, and really got into historic dance reconstruction years ago, but outside of such settings I do the equivalent of humming to myself around the house rather than really engaging with it. I have spent more time noodling with dance education than with dance itself. It's a crying shame how much time people waste when trying to learn things like waltz...

Try some things. See what sticks.

> I am a highly analytical person and a software engineer. I like to believe I am creative...

I have found most self identity involving being creative to be more limiting and damaging than its worth. You start questioning whether you are overly influenced by something, or if it's original enough, or if you're squandering your creativity by writing a poem about defecating in the woods, or if you're not being true to yourself by creating within constraints that let you get paid. All of which are a complete waste of your time and are more likely to reduce the incidence of behavior that creates things.

The serious artists that I have known are generally highly analytical. The whole "I'm expressing my pure, authentic self" I think is mostly a form of pickup line.