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i need a hobby
By heather | February 19, 2008
What do you do for fun? Just for a minute, don’t be politically correct and tell me that you play with your children. Tell me what you do FOR YOU.
I’m dead serious when I ask this question. This weekend I had a deep intellectual conversation with my friend Susan, in which we talked about how we spend our time. We compared how we spent our hours and talked about what our husbands do for fun.
Men have fun. They have hobbies, like golf and poker. They play games and team sports. When they are away from the house, having fun, they aren’t thinking about what they should make for dinner or when they’ll find time to clean the bathroom.
We came to the conclusion that we don’t have a lot of fun.
It’s not that I hate every minute of every day. I just don’t have anything I do for fun. When I had this conversation with my husband, his response was, “You go to the gym.”
Going to the gym is not pure fun. Yes, I feel better after I go. I am also required to go if I don’t want my pants to become the size of a double wide. I am not naturally skinny and I like food.
Going to the gym is also required from a mental standpoint. As Susan put it, going to the gym is a normalizer - it brings your sanity up to a normal level and keeps you from losing it, but doesn’t qualify as fun.
I’ll confess that I’m a hobby wh0re. I’ve tried all the WOMANLY hobbies like scrapbooking and sewing and soapmaking, and have participated just long enough to invest hundreds of dollars in supplies before abandoning it altogether.
I still have what I like to call the hobby graveyard - where fabric remnants and photo-safe paper lie abandoned, in the hopes that one day Alex and I will find that we already have exactly what we need for a brilliant art project thus giving me a return on investment that will ease the guilt of sunk costs.
It has also occured to me that unlike most MAN hobbies, WOMAN hobbies produce something. Like knitting. How many scarves or booties or sweaters does one person need? Eventually you run out of people to give things to, and then your hobby dies a slow death, smothered under it’s excess output.
I despise team sports. Camping to me is staying at a Holiday Inn. I don’t think shopping counts as a hobby. Writing, maybe. Reading blogs? Iffy. Getting massages? Doesn’t seem right. I learned in my workshop this weekend that brain waves used while watching TV are equivalent to the brain waves of someone in a coma. So I guess TV watching is out.
I’ve always wanted to learn how to shoot, but that’s probably an unsafe activity when you’re four months pregnant, right up there with water skiing and horseback riding. Cooking is too much like a chore especially when you have to clean up the kitchen to make counter space first. Napping? Making lists? Pathetic.
So what else is there that’s cheap or free, safe for a pregnant woman, and entertaining enough for someone who can’t NOT do two things at once? Help me have fun before I explode.
Topics: hobbies |
February 19th, 2008 at 9:43 am
Go geocaching! Either that or letterboxing (letterboxing.org) the untechnological, and older version. You can go by yourself, with Alex or as a family. You can choose which caches to find to fit your mood: easy to hard to virtual. And now, during the winter, the bugs should be at a minimum.
I also like getting together with my female friends, although here that’s few and far between. Become a food or movie critic with them.
It’s not fair to compare guys’ means of having fun with girls’. Their brains are different and they have fun differently. And it depends on the guy as to whether he’s thinking about what needs to be done later. Du would be one of the ones worried about what he “really” should be doing.
Also, don’t worry if you start something only to tire of it later. I do that a lot. I do try to come back to it though sometime in the future. One of my hobbies one time was genealogy. I stopped though when Reagan was born and haven’t touched it since. I know I’ll get back into it though. Knitting has gone the same way only because I have to think and count stitches, which cannot be done with anyone else in the room.
February 19th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
I am the pathetic one. I greatly enjoy being ALONE and catching up on my TIVO. It is my sanity at night. I also do a girls night out not often enough and shopping, for my child more than me. I guess I am a bad person to ask, but I think once you have a child, alone time is a hobby and important regardless. Whatever makes you happy can be your hobby, whether you are actually making or doing something or being in a TV coma. When Andrew was a baby and I was sleep deprived, going for my 6 week check-up at the OB/GYN was like heaven to me, I was alone and not pumping.
February 19th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
I dont know if what I do counts as hobbies. In my free time, I read EXCESSIVELY and I play games on the computer. These are the two things that calm me down.
Miss’s last blog post..Now I know
February 21st, 2008 at 12:58 am
Wait a minute. Man hobbies don’t produce anything? That seems a little too broad. What about eating? There are a lot of byproducts from eating. And sleeping on the couch all day? I think we can find something useful in that too.
-I like your writing style.
March 31st, 2008 at 1:14 pm
[...] and I had a long discussion this weekend about parenting, pregnancy, babies, the definition of fun, and work in which he got a true taste of what goes on inside my head when I’m sans anxiety [...]