Old and New Hobbies
A personal tale from quarantine
When I think of the time I’ve spent in quarantine, I feel rather low about it. How I’ve wasted my time watching YouTube videos and eating too many potato chips.
And in the wee hours of the night, I find myself ready to create. Ready to move my hands and bring it from my brain to reality. Creating things has always brought me joy, yet the thought of comparison to other artists pushes me back through the creative barrier.
I struggle every day to create something, to do something with my time, despite giving myself permission to create something that may not be creative genius.
Some say make a to-do list. Others say to force yourself to do it.
The problem is deeper than that.
At my core, I want to create. However, I was born to two left-brained scientists: one a chemical analyst and the other a nuclear engineer. Two left-brains somehow made a right(-brain).
When I was little, I filled notebooks with unfinished stories which I still have to this day. The first one I wrote was called: My Friend Big Ears. It was about how I had an alien friend aptly named Big Ears who kidnapped me (and my pet Pikachu) to Jupiter. I didn’t get much farther than that.
My parents would never want to read my stories and told me:
Don’t be silly and try to be a starving artist. You need to have a real career in the sciences.
Even though they wanted me to go into the sciences, they allowed me to take art classes inside and outside of school. They bought supplies for me.
But I wasn’t supposed to be an artist.
Looking back at some of my pieces from high school, I wasn’t bad, but I wasn’t good either. My marks in art class always drove that schema into my head that I would never be better than others.
Even writing classes in university didn’t help. Only one professor truly liked my work and I think the others tolerated me. The rules they drilled into our heads left no room for my personality.
All of this combined drove me into a depression that I still struggle with to this day.
It’s been about 5 years since I graduated from university and all I’ve felt since then is burnout and writer’s block. I look forward to every November for NaNoWriMo, yet I find myself unable to write. It’s only been recently that I’ve thought through a story and started to write it piece-by-piece.
Some days I managed to write a page or two, but most days, I can only get a sentence out on the page.
So I began to look for something else to satisfy my creativity.
Starting in university, with make-up, I wanted a hobby as an outlet for my creativity. I like to try new things and often find it hard to commit to just one hobby. So unfortunately over the years, I have ended up with multiple hobbies, almost all of which I have abandoned at some point and come back to later.
Now with quarantine, I have had the time to revisit them all.
Make-Up
I began my make-up obsession in 2015, when I discovered beauty YouTubers. I wanted to be like them. I wanted to paint my face.
My mother never put make-up on and all I could see were the other girls around me with their made-up faces which made me jealous. So I began watching Beauty YouTube.
I still love make-up, but I hardly wear it. I put it on every once in a while and then immediately wash it off of my face.
Tea
For many, this wouldn’t be considered a hobby, but it sure is for the indoctrinated few. They are picky about their tea ware, storage of their tea, the flavour, etc.
I drink mainly oolong and puerh.
This is a hobby that I have further cultivated during quarantine, trying to refine my palate for the newest tea.
Tarot
Tarot has helped me a lot lately. I think I just want reassurance, even though I am asking for it from pieces of flimsy card stock.
But I think that tarot is just that. Something to meditate around and to keep my hands busy. It’s not something I can create, but it’s something to help me manifest the things I want.
Needle-felting
A newer hobby of mine. This is very therapeutic for me. I can turn on a long video and just stab at the wool. I make smaller, ornamental pieces that only take a few hours, but those few hours and the most zen-like hours I have ever lived through.
I am currently making Animal Crossing themed pieces and I like how they turned out.
Card Making
I am now about two years into this hobby and I feel like it’s a good alternative to creating art from scratch. I can use other people’s images and create a scene using those images.
It’s a hobby that I feel like I’m actually good at. It’s good for killing time and listening to a podcast too.
Knitting
Knitting is a hobby I took up in earnest when I was younger. This is a hobby that I have more or less abandoned entirely and the yarn hangs around like a ghostly reminder that I should pick up this hobby again.
Punch Needle
Another new hobby that I have taken up during quarantine,I find myself fascinated with how quick it is to create a piece. And because I have a lot of yarn left from a knitting obsession, I knew that this hobby was one for me.
I am still exploring punch needling, but it is easy, despite the hefty upfront costs.
All in all, writing is still my number one love. I started out feeling down about not being able to write and by the end of this story, I feel energized and happy again.
I guess it may be clear to some of you readers that I find it hard to commit to just one thing, but I think that is the way I like it. Having numerous hobbies makes it easier to turn to something else when I get bored/tired of one thing.
What hobbies do you, dear reader, have?
