April 2024
I’m sitting around the table at Book Club last month trying to reach my 30-inch non-dominant arm across my friends’ 60-inch dining table for another olive without making a scene. Much like every month, we’re discussing (nodding, doing the basic algebra of adding, subtracting, oohing and aahing, abstracting) bosses, love life updates, whether the puppy can make it up and down the stairs, the variety of cheese on this Lenten charcuterie board — everything but Wendell Berry; everything but the book. As my hand bumps left off course just missing someone’s full wine glass, the conversation shifts to the Tuesday night loom weaving class two in the group have signed up for, and I give up and go in for a cracker instead.
“Someone asked me the other day, and I thought, hobbies? I don’t know, going to the gym? Cooking my dinner? Cleaning my house? Spending time with friends? I don’t have time for anything else.”
I get it, I think, crunching away leftover lust for that olive. Everything else feels like a waste of time.
Not to worry: I soon got my hands on a tub full of olives, and it got me thinking again. Isn’t a good hobby, at its core, a waste of time? With any stray hour, you could be cleaning or editing your resume or studying for the GMAT. Is a hobby NOT essentially choosing boldly (borderline arrogantly) to NOT do something you really should, in order to do something that feels unproductive, impractical — but intentionally so — and in this, becomes all the more meaningful? Hobby is brief departure from what occupies every single other hour of your day-to-day: duty, future-focused ambition, and responsibility.
A few weeks later, I found myself at the periphery of a small party (one that, due to losing myself in a few extensive Python programs all week, I’d forgotten to juice up any social prowess for), joking to my good looming friend about our best option for pressing play and diving into the fray. “How about, ‘Hey, I’m Ellie, what’s your hobby?’” I suggested, only half kidding. We both pictured walking up to the small circles of our college acquaintances strewn around the room with this chirpy little opener.
“People would hate us,” she said.
I nearly spit out my seltzer laughing in agreement. Same thing with that awkward but unerring conclusion, "gee...he needed to get a hobby." But, why? Would bringing up hobbies feel so childish — socially unacceptable, even — because most of us feel defensive that we don’t have one? Annoyed with ourselves for not making the time for one (or, simply...for not having identified one)? To quote Jack Harlow during his Chicken Shop Date with Amelia Dimoldenberg: to worry.
My resume lists writing (surprising to no one), “city of Chicago,” “second language acquisition theory and teaching,” reading, and “baking pies” as interests. My brother, who’s going straight into private equity, keeps “downhill mountain biking” on his. And we stand by that. If nothing else, so that we can finish the sentence, “Data analyst by day, [insert hobby here]-ist by night.” But these things I profess to love are the same ones in which I do not let myself indulge until all duty and responsibility feels finished. This means I’m prone to — in corporate speak — table that book for next week, punt that run to another sunny day, extend my self-set deadline on learning how to order a croissant in French, because I am either too serious or too cowardly to do something silly — and grant myself permission to do it more often.
Maybe, by this definition, a hobby is a luxury: to take ultra-temporary leisure to do something silly that forces you into the now. Yet I'm heavily aware that there are long seasons in life when this is impossible. I am grateful for the time and space these past couple of years to select and practice some of these hobbies until they, at last, have begun to form the loveliest of habits. (And, arguably, great practice at some virtues, too).
If you, too, have the time...take it and groove with it.
But, also, you probably already have a hobby. You should just write it down somewhere. A hobby unpracticed is like a gift card left unused. And most gift cards expire. Let's write it down, and then try five minutes a week. This is no longer the luxury finish; this is attainability at its utter best. So, time to go find a recipe for that tarte tatin and pull up a map of Chinatown! That's not even pulling out a pan or getting on a bus yet. Cheers to starting. Really! Anywhere.
With love from the bin of Cheese Odds and Ends at the grocery,
Ellie
P.S. I meant to write a full post about this, but: did you know Trader Joe’s now sells a Spanish tortilla de patata? Apparently it’s imported from a supplier in Spain. My review is: I like it, if you stick yourself to my conspiracy that it’s come straight from the factories of my dearly departed, Mercadona.
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