Hobbies

About a year ago, I was sitting at home watching something of no consequence on television when a friend rang me out of the blue. I say out of the blue because, although we had been friends for a couple of years, I don't think I had ever had a chat on the phone with her. The fact that she was a little bored and just fancied a natter with someone she hadn't seen for a while was beside the point - we had progressed. And ultimately the call had value for me.

In the course of the conversation she asked me what I did for hobbies. I paused. Well, I go to the gym. Mmm, that's a start but she didn't see it as something someone did as a passion, as such. More a health angle. I didn't 100% agree with the assumption but accepted it enough in my case as I've often just been a functional gym person. Get in, get out. Okay, what else? I like to hang out with people. Again, that didn't do much for her - "we all do that", was the sense of her response. I paused again. Somehow I'd managed to fill my non-working waking ours with "stuff". A 30-something year-old man with no dependents, not too onerous work hours and a degree of disposable income, and the best that I could finally offer up was "I watch a bit of television"...

It's not a judgement call on how people use their spare time and I was never going to be the wakeboarding, sailing, hiking individual that this friend of mine was. But in my head I'd always thought of myself as a hobby kind of guy. There are lots of things I reckon I'd be good at and would enjoy. Then I realised that it had often taken me so long to initiate with gusto any of my grand plans that I had been too often left floundering directionless at the start line. Anyway, that conversation gnawed away in my subconscious for a few months until I fell upon a flyer for a kung fu class. Trying out kung fu had been on my mind for a good 3-4 years prior and it became very clear that it was an "if not now, when?" moment. Fast forward to now, and I'm still doing the classes 2-3 times a week. I'll talk about the kung fu itself at another juncture as it has given me some interesting insights. But at least now I can walk a bit more of my wishlist talk. I do believe I can properly call it a hobby.

Keeping a diary

Diaries – nasty things sometimes. Spewing up your deepest darkest fears, hates and despairs; and as much bile that single-lined A4 can contain. I’ve looked back through some of the stuff I wrote back in the day and, Jeez, what a difference a fair few years make. Okay, I may have been an angst-ridden teenager or directionless student but there was a lot of strange thinking in those days. But it’s brilliant now being able to look and laugh at all that stuff. Absolutely brilliant.

Then there are the “must do, must, must do” lists I put together as a “grown up” to shape my world, sometimes ambitious, sometimes pithy. Either way, it was all about making myself a “better person”. Well, I’ve managed to dig up some of these lists as well from the early part of the decade and it’s kind of reassuring that I’m still talking about some of the same kind of nonsense. Getting fluent in Ecuadorian Spanish, developing multi-billion dollar streams of passive income, taking up Kung Fu – you know the score. Well, the way I see it, I’m still doing the rounds on this. Which is cool. Some will come to something and some to come to nothing. But I've got something to shoot for. I’m still in the game. And I’ll keep writing my lists.