A busy community volunteer remarked the other day, “I got so involved with helping out after I retired because I didn’t have a single hobby to keep me busy.” I too don’t have a hobby but I do help in the community sometimes.
Why didn’t I have hobbies like most people? I understand that there are many advantages to having them. They can provide a break from routine or your partner, uncover hidden talents and even identify new skills. It should have been an easy process but to me it was all so confusing.
I mostly worked in an office and was so conscious of wrinkles in my shirts and pants that I took to ironing them often. I enjoyed ironing, even my ex’s dress wear, that is until I scorched her brand new blouse. Other than experimenting with the volume of steam from the iron and occasionally playing with the height of the ironing board, I can’t really see it as a genuine hobby.
Trivia pursuit competitions were my nemesis – I couldn’t recall enough details regarding the questions asked in order to answer them. I did help organize one event and enjoyed that. Then, Train Spotting: I could never understand that one; driving all over creation to write down the engine model numbers, names on trains and supposedly other nonsense. What a waste!
I had a brother-in-law who liked to appear as an extra in movies that were shot in the Toronto region. He eventually was so much in demand that he required an answering service for his job offers. A psychic told me once that I would be in the movies in due time. I was consistently anticipating being whisked off to Hollywood at a moment’s notice. The closest it ever came though was ending up in Westmeath with a part in a comedy farce that didn’t improve on my image one iota.
As teenagers our hobby was bothering adults and causing mayhem when we could, whether stealing corn, waking people at night from a deep sleep just for the hell of it or speeding through the village and practicing wheelies with our Dad’s cars. It was so much fun but only persisted a few years so that doesn’t qualify as a hobby either.
I love the stories about people who occasionally go on a tear or a bender and give away $10 to everyone in their path just to leave them with a good feeling. Yeah right! I’d like to do that too but I haven’t the money and am too cheap even if I had it.
Chuck Lamb, better known as the Dead Boy Guy, aspired to be an actor but couldn’t cut it. Instead, he regularly staged photos of his death and posted them on Facebook. It caught the notice of a person of significance and eventually earned him a small career as a horror icon. I got status similar to that too, from an incident in High School geography. I was turned around talking to a classmate when the teacher whacked me over the head with a great big thick textbook. It knocked me from my desk and I tumbled onto the floor. My mischievous mind made me lie perfectly still and hold my breath for as long as I could. The teacher thought I was dead and started to frantically wring his hands and pace the floor. When I finally had to exhale minutes later, the teacher’s panic morphed into anger for being tricked and looking foolish. My fellow students were jubilant and my novel reputation persisted for the rest of the school year.
Last year I bought myself a set of Tarot cards, a deck of 78 cards, each with its own imagery and stories. I planned it as a hobby then to hold readings for people to predict their future, making some money by doing so. I spent many long hours studying and trying to comprehend the concepts of the game, writing dozens of cheat sheets also, but in the end I remembered not much more than the four suits of the cards. I should have seen that one coming!
Some people are satisfied with traditional hobbies like stamp collecting, coin collecting, and even comic books and action figures – all too straight-laced and mundane to turn my crank. Bowling or curling are a little more upbeat but committing to a schedule was not for me. So I’m still searching.
I realize now that I did have numerous ideas and theories of multiple hobbies and that in itself became more relevant than the hobbies. It looks like all those life-long thoughts about hobbies was in actual fact my hobby.
