I need a hobby

Embracing the humility of being bad at something

“I need a hobby,” I confessed to my friend after church Sunday.

Though my reasons are many and varied and probably best explored elsewhere, suffice it to say this is not a new sentiment. A few years ago I said much the same to my husband, to which he replied, “Other than reading, you mean?” His point was a fair one. I did, and do, spend a lot of my free time reading. But is reading a hobby? I don’t know. Regardless, I was thinking then of the sort of hobby that, you know, creates, one where at the end of the day there is a tangible something.

So I decided I would crochet and that to learn to crochet, I needed a book. At that time, a visit to the bookstore for us meant a trip out of town. So on our next jaunt to the big city, we stopped by the big box bookstore where I made my way to the previously uncharted waters of the craft and hobby section. There I bravely surveyed the multitude of knitting and crochet options, tentatively flipping through a few titles only to discover that they were written, literally, in a language I did not understand. Suddenly a productive hobby seemed an impossible pursuit.

Some time after my frightened dash out of the bookstore sans any sort of crochet instructional manual, my mom, always helpful and always wanting to find answers to my stickiest of conundrums, suggested I might try hooking wool. She has a friend who hooks the most beautiful rugs and even sources and cuts her own wool. Intrigued, I ordered a kit from Etsy and got started. I liked it, I think. However, I soon gave it up, partly because I couldn’t help thinking of the long game. How would I use this (albeit very small) hooked wool creation upon completion? Is it a pillow? A wall hanging? And what if this becomes my hobby and I end up hooking project after project after project, what would I do with them all? Just how many hooked wool pillows and coasters could one amass or give away?

This is when what I suspected about to be true about myself was in fact confirmed: I am not a true creative. A creative creates because she loves creating, the end result merely a by-product of the process. I, on the other hand, could not separate the process, however fun it may be, with the product and its purpose.

I have made other, brief, stabs at hobby-making. A couple of years ago, my sweet daughter-in-law taught me a very simple, basic knitting stitch and lent me needles and a skein of yarn, both of which are still in the drawer I placed them after our “lesson.” Again, it’s not that so much I didn’t like it; in this case, I just forget about it, and about asking her to teach me, again. See? Not a true creative. The true creative remembers what it is she wants to create.

Anyway, a few years ago I read an article about hobbies and passions and how we as a culture have lost the simple pleasure once inherent in hobby for hobby’s sake. Hobbies now become side hustles, professionalized and monetized and as such no longer hobbies. Like to write? Publish a book! Love to craft? Open an Etsy shop! And on and on it goes. We hone our craft so to speak, not just from an inherent desire to improve, but in order to compete, to best our neighbor, to prove our worth, ultimately to turn a profit. But often when we professionalize our joy in hobby-ing it then ceases to be a hobby or a joy.

I understand this tension. Once, a long time ago, a friend asked me to write a little something for her blog. This friend is a professional, a published author of real books, and I was greatly honored she invited me to submit some thoughts. Writing was (is), obviously, not my profession and, just keeping it real, that was reflected in the piece I submitted. What I'm trying to say is it was not good, very much not good, certainly not professional writer stuff. Part of me (a big part) was totally mortified with what I submitted.

Sure, absolutely I should submit only my very best work and maybe that piece wasn't. But maybe too I needed to remember there's something to be said for writing and submitting in the first place as the amateur I was.

"The glory is in the effort" I have sometimes said, though I'm not sure where I picked up that particular colloquialism. Is that true? Is the worth only in the perfection and professionalization of the product? Or could it be there is value in taking the journey to begin with, in making the effort, in giving it a try, however imperfectly we stumble along?

I think I know why I find hobby-ing difficult: I don’t want to be bad at something. I mean, I famously dislike playing games because I hate to lose! But here’s the thing about hobbies, not only do they give idle (or bored or lonely) hands something to do but by definition a hobby is “an activity or interest pursued for pleasure or relaxation and not as a main occupation.” A hobby is for fun. Forget the long game, forget being bad, forget Etsy and the side hustle, just do it. For fun.

So, here’s what I’m saying to myself—and part of why I’m writing this, here, now, after all those years of non-blogging, afraid of creating something very much not good—be humble enough to be bad at something. And, be courageous enough to try something new and maybe look like a fool doing it. For, you know, fun.

I may well end up with stacks of poorly hooked rugs or a drawer full of half finished knitting projects or a Substack newsletter of badly written sentences and incoherent thoughts. But so what? Maybe the glory really is in the effort. For sure there is no shame in being a dabbler. This is for fun.