Nascent Thoughts on Hobbies

I use to fancy myself a connoisseur of everything, an endless well of interest in new subjects or hobbies. Until that got really tiring.

Recently, I have noted that I feel like a deer in headlights any time someone asks me about my hobbies. What are they?

It used to be reading and/or writing. But I haven’t sat down to write something in ages and when I tell some people about this one, they shrug it off as something that all people do.

It could have been cooking. But too frequently I cook out of necessity instead of for pleasure these days.

It is hiking and being outdoors. But shift the time of year, climate, or priorities and that always takes a back seat.

Perhaps gardening or food self-sufficiency could be on the list. But it always gets deprioritized because it isn’t a necessity.

I call myself a minimalist. But similar to calling out “being a parent” in this context, that doesn’t feel like a hobby so much as an intentional lack of one and it is more a way of life anyway.

Which leaves me with work. Perhaps this is a common refrain from parents who have jobs in which they have passion, but work can’t be a hobby as well because if work lacks pleasure (which it can and does at times) you are left with nothing more than exhaustion.