I feel sorry for those who have no hobbies. I see it all the time, in books, in movies, in real life. People find themselves bored out of their wits and go do something stupid or crazy to make up for it. Desperate housewives who have affairs, small town teenagers who get into crack cocaine, disenfranchised young men who get into gangs and violence—they drown their ennui with destructive behavior.

I’ve never had “nothing” to do, so I have no idea what that’s like. If I ever find myself bored, I start to do something, anything, any one of my many million hobbies or personal interests. I sometimes think I have too many of them as I never seem to have enough hours in a day to accomplish everything I want to do. Growing up, I collected stickers and stamps. I doodled and colored. I sewed dresses for my dolls and stuffed animals. I wrote poems and stories for myself, letters to my friend Janine, and journal entries, just because. I played deejay and made music tapes. I practiced my piano playing. I made up new games to play with my cousins and sister. I chain read books, and I created dance moves. I even landscaped my backyard to look like a camp with hiking trails. I did so much more that I can’t even recall, and I continue to this day to fill my daily hours.

And I have way too many hobbies and interests. If I took only half an hour each day to do something different, I still wouldn’t be able to cram everything in one day. H.E. gets frustrated with me because I don’t play my keyboard enough or because I haven’t updated my online portfolio yet, but that’s the trade off with having so many things to do. You do one thing at the expense of another.

If I am painting a new watercolor piece, I’m not practicing Scott Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag. If I am crocheting a piece, I’m not shooting photos at the park. If I am creating a web site for someone, I am not updating my own site. Even if I find a way to multi-task, kill two birds with one stone, the time saved is still not enough to fit in the rest of the neglected activities.

For instance, I record my TV and news shows so I can skip the commercials and save myself 15 minutes out of every hour, and even as I watch TV in concentrated form, I crochet so I can get that done, too. Or I crochet while talking on the phone. I do my reading on the treadmill or while I’m waiting for my turn at the car wash. And when one computer is busy processing one file, I switch over to the other computer and work on something else.

Even with all of this time-saving, I fall behind. I have plenty of hobbies to keep me happy as a clam and busy for years and years to come, forever going like the Energizer bunny, always doing something.

So I feel sorry for those whose lives are almost unbearable to them because they can’t keep busy or they have no interests to keep them busy. They have no nappies to knit, no books to read, no golf games to play. And even if they were provided the opportunities to do this or that, they find no joy in it—they’re just not the creative type, the athletic type, the musical type, or the green thumb type. So in short, they have nothing to do. They don’t want to try anything. They don’t want to do anything. They don’t want to accomplish anything.

So they do nothing, and they get bored.

I seriously do not understand that. Life is so short, and there are always so much to attempt, how can anyone be bored and have time to kill? I don’t know what that’s like, and I never want to know. But if I could share some of my hobbies with people who don’t have any, I would.

I figure they need them more than I do.

Share this post: