A New Reverence for Hobbies

Admittedly, I’m a bit of a hobby collector. That’s what brings you and I together here, after all. I have always had an eye to the horizon, so to speak, looking for what the next thing that might be interesting or useful. I am part of the transitional generation for whom the internet was nonexistent as children, but as adults, we saw it become a part of everyday life. Coming by new hobbies and rabbit holes was a little more labor intensive growing up. The information on how to get started in something like playing guitar, or doing stage makeup was not readily available (at least not in the way it is currently). With a mastery of the Dewey Decimal System, you could find resources at the library for sure, but you were limited by what books were kept on the shelves and by extension the knowledge and aptitude of the authors. Finding someone who actually participated in the activity you were investigating was truly striking gold in those days. It’s an apt comparison, by the way: equal parts putting yourself in the right place, and blind, stupid luck. It’s easy for me to romanticize this. It’s no exaggeration to say that lifelong friendships and marriages were forged by simply finding someone out there who was into the same particular brand of insanity or obsession that you were.

I got my first computer with a modem in 1996. My family had a subscription to America Online. While there was plenty of absurdity on the internet even in those early days, a driving force for me was always trying to find information on my hobbies. Playing music was at the forefront in those days, but I also searched high and low to find anything I could to help me be a better baseball player, better boyfriend, better actor, and most importantly – how to be the best at Tekken 2 for PlayStation. While the things I was chasing down were admittedly pretty trivial, kids like me were getting an informal education in how to do research in what was essentially the wild west days of the internet. There was no Wikipedia. There was no quality control. Sometimes you would stumble across a web page (a single page, not an entire site) built and maintained by another obsessed individual somewhere, and you would bookmark that and it would become your bible. This was the “eureka” of finding someone in real life that shared your awesome/ridiculous passion, but in text and low-res image form.

What separates duties and responsibilities from hobbies or passions is the freedom to choose why you do them. For some of us, we are fortunate enough to have our passions align with our work. In that case, both the fulfillment of the things that are required of you, as well as the things that you hope and strive for are met with the same means. Make no mistake – this is a rare condition and one that should be sought out and treasured if achieved, or even stumbled upon.

The reality is, most of us won’t find this particular synergy in our lifetime. Your work, or your profession will most often have a “why” assigned to it automatically. Work provides food, shelter, status, and other necessities. This amazing age we live in, however, offers unprecedented opportunities to find new hobbies, interests or passions. We have more ways to find people in similar pursuits and learn from them than ever before in human history. There has never been a better time to try things out than now. Even better, you can find hobbies and interests that align with your goals to be more self-sufficient, or to have a more sustainable and environmentally conscious home life.

Once you try enough things out, odds are that you are going to find one that really lights a fire under you. One that motivates you to work harder, train more intently, pay more attention, and branch out like never before. This is passion in its infancy. That inexplicable drive to get better at something, despite there being discernible or tangible benefit, is a spark that has to be nurtured into a flame. Whether or not that flame burns for a lifetime; Who knows? But it would be shame to see it neglected and extinguished before you get a chance to see how bright and long it can burn.

Everyone should have a hobby. Scratch that – everyone should have at least two. Anyone who is capable of it should have pursuits outside of their profession. The reason why has a lot to do with our brains.

Let’s say that you are a programmer by trade. When you first learned to code in school, or even teaching yourself, you took the well-traveled path to mastery. At first you observed. You saw how other applications functioned and marveled at the underlying artistry. You poked and prodded, and looked under the hood to see what was so interesting about all those lines of seemingly indecipherable code. Next, you learned some core skills that would help build a foundation for everything to come. You practiced. You slowly expanded your skill set to be more varied. You then practiced those. A great deal of time was spent here before you began to demonstrate mastery or create anything truly new. The frontal cortex of your brain was working overtime to integrate new knowledge, repeat what you observed, and apply theory with progressively less and less error. When you finally began to approach mastery, the prize, neurologically speaking, was that your brain begins to recruit neural pathways from other parts of the brain to handle the tasks at which you are gaining capability and familiarity. This in turn opens up that wonderfully plastic problem-solving area in the frontal cortex that had been so hard at work when you were in the practice phase.

All well and good, but a human mind unburdened with problem solving and skill acquisition is precisely where boredom begins. Boredom can lead to dissatisfaction and reduced quality of life. As the saying goes, “If you’re bored, you’re boring.” Enter hobbies.

Will your backyard garden turn a profit that allows you to quit your job? Will bushcraft make it so you can sell your house and live in the woods? Will you take to cooking so well that you become a famous chef? Can hunting and fishing pay the bills? Not likely. What they can do, however, is create an opportunity to both learn and teach life lessons. A life spent learning to be more self-sufficient, to embrace the outdoors, to learn crafts, truly presents opportunities for physical challenge, skill acquisition, and character-building like nothing else I’ve ever known. Facilitating my friends, my community, and my children finding these opportunities is my responsibility as a person. A successful day in the woods hunting, or pulling fish after fish out of a lake won’t keep the lights on at the house. What it can do, however, is fulfill a key responsibility while still satisfying the desire to play, explore, and test myself. As outdoorsmen, we have to consider ourselves stewards of not only wildlife and wild places, but of the next generation of hunters, anglers, and explorers. When we coach little league baseball, we do so with the understanding that statistically zero of these kids are going to play baseball for a living. So we make sure that we teach lessons about mental fortitude, fairness, sportsmanship, and accountability along with how to catch a pop fly. We do this because we want them to take these bigger picture skills forward into whatever circumstance life places them in. So too, we should approach the physical, mental, and ethical trappings of the strenuous, self-sufficient life. 

Taking this perspective has helped me to take my pursuits just a bit more seriously. I have realized that if I am going to excel at something and try to pass it on with my example, then I had best be prepared. You would think that approaching a hobby with this mindset would turn it into a joyless, tedious pursuit. In fact, quite the opposite is true. In honing my mind and body to prepare for whatever adventures might await me out there, my enjoyment of those opportunities is greatly magnified when they finally present themselves.