Teaching myself physics, is this a futile attempt?

[Angrboda]

Once upon a time, I thought about teaching myself physics. And while I had some memory of calculus and numerical analysis, I realized I would need to educate myself on the math, before learning physics, especially differential equations, which I never completed, and there are plenty of math specialties that figure into things like quantum mechanics, too (like, I believe they call it linear algebra now, but it was just determinants and matrices in my time). (I recently read a paper that attempted to explain Kripke's theory of truth by analogizing it to a Kleene closure; needless to say, that didn't help.)

Part of why that never happened is because my love of foreign languages re-ignited, and picking up languages is very time intensive, especially the harder ones.

However, having lost my fingers, I've abandoned my language studies. (Though I still get occasional twinges. I look at a Chinese character, and I feel in my bones the order and movement that I would make to write the character.)

Now, I've got a full life, reading books and discussing things with atheists, skeptics, humanists and philosophers in my community. That takes up all my time. But even if I weren't doing that, I still wouldn't turn to learning math and physics. Not because I wouldn't love to learn about them, but I realize that my time is short, and even prioritizing to spend time on my areas of specialization, there would never be enough hours in the day to learn all that I want to about them. I think, an adult, learns to prioritize, and focus on a few things, rather than spread themselves too thin. So I guess the question is, are you really willing to take the time away from other things to do this? And exactly what kind of understanding are you looking for? Superficial grasp of base concepts and beginner to intermediate physics? Or advanced understanding of one or more specialization in physics? And why do you want it?