Feed Your Hobby Horse

As my awareness of time takes more centre stage, daily life survival efforts kindly take a step back at times, and I find that I, shockingly, focus much more on creative experiences– is that ‘hobbies’?  Do you have hobbies?  As a kid, outside of school activities, I enjoyed ordinary things– brownies, swimming, skating, softball, reading, playing.  As a full-fledged adult I’ve tried many activities but never really hooked onto any one hobby as a playful-fun-can-totally-occupy-me-with-mental-flow-for-years kind of thing.   I’m more of a serial hobbyist, bestowing my free time willy nilly.

“To be happy in life, develop at least four hobbies: one to bring you money, one to keep you healthy, one to bring you joy, and one to bring you peace.”
― Stan Jacobs, The Dusk And Dawn Master: A Practical Guide to Transforming Evening and Morning Habits, Achieving Better Sleep, and Mastering Your Life 

That’s a bit prescriptive but I like the general idea.  Hobbies help you to meet new people and experience new adventures.  Who doesn’t want those things!?

Is this you?  I do some activity for a while, then grow bored (long before I get good at it), and move onto something else.  The theory, by Malcolm Gladwell, that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become great, has been challenged by other thinkers.  However, 10,000 hours or not, it does take practice to become sufficiently good, to really enjoy most hobbies.  So, how to decide what to invest your precious time in practicing?  And do most people try a bunch of different things?  Sports? Art? Social Events?

Generally speaking, a hobby is anything that we do just for fun.  Usually you aren’t getting paid to do it and it may cost money to get involved in the hobby.  It is something that you like to do with your free time that helps you decompress and sometimes, connect with other people or accomplish something new.

My definition would also include a creative outlet and it definitely has to add a new,interesting and positive element to your everyday life. Some of the hobbies that I have tried as an adult:  tap dancing, calligraphy, making pottery, improv at Second City, colouring (although I’m kind of embarrassed about that for some reason), travel, gardening, ukulele, harmonica, a plethora of different sports including boxing and tennis,  book clubs, bridge clubs, hiking clubs, baking, horseback riding and cooking….am I missing anything?

I’ve tried to stick to trying one new hobby each year to become good enough to know if it’s a worthwhile hobby for long term investment of my time.  Some have been successful—curling, although frankly it took about 2 years before I started to enjoy that a lot, and some have not been successful at all—ukulele anyone?  My mother played the harmonica, which I thought exceptionally cool, but alas I don’t have the persistence to play more than the Beatles “Please Please Me”.

So, this month is my latest new (and I admit,  feels very creative) hobby– painting old wooden furniture bright and shiny colours.  The furniture must be an interesting shape to me, and, basically free.  Here are 4 chairs from my friends’ grandmother.

I have an interestingly shaped small table to tackle next, so will show you when it’s finished.  Anticipation!

“Legendary innovators like Franklin, Snow, and Darwin all possess some common intellectual qualities—a certain quickness of mind, unbounded curiosity—but they also share one other defining attribute. They have a lot of hobbies.”
― Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation

So my experience and advice is to keep trying new hobby things, and don’t worry too much if  you loose interest after you’ve given it a good effort.  Those geniuses knew that many hobbies, whether talent is involved or not, may be good and interesting things for  expanding the heart of your life.