It might be that I don’t believe in hobbies. It might be
that...
It might be that I don’t believe in hobbies. It might be
that the things we relegate to pastimes, side projects, extracurriculars, are
as crucial as the more major pursuits (your fulltime job; the ones in your life
you love). It might be that I believe that the actions or activities or
practices that one does for enjoyment, which is to say, for satisfaction,
challenge, focus, and pleasure, should be followed with the same gusto and discipline
as you approach the things you give most time and thought to. Your bicycle
rides, your flower garden, your watercolors, your sewing, your pickling, your
ultimate, your beekeeping, your dioramas, your stamps, your photographs of
discarded wind-bent umbrellas, your tarot, your ping pong, your
guitar/cello/bass/drums/or harmonica, your taxidermy, your kite-flying, your
star-gazing, your bread.
It’s just that they’re not to be dismissed. Where you
choose to pour your attention is the most important choice you have to make.
Recently I’ve started learning woodblock printing from an
artist with a printmaking studio with big windows nearby. For the time being,
circular saws, cordless drills, sawzalls, nail guns, have given way to a set of
six wooden-handled carving tools and thin sheets of plywood from Japan. This
wood work is smaller, slower, quieter than building a deck, framing a wall,
trimming a room. And it’s changing how I move through the world and changing
how and what I see. It is opening my eyes to light. It is reminding me how much
as I child I loved to draw. It’s absorbing.
I guess maybe I hate the word hobby. What are you hobbies? Psssh. Ask
another way: what do you make/collect/enjoy? How do you give shape to your
days?
