I’ve been giving some thought to the question of hobbies. What are they, why do them, what hobbies are interesting, how much time should we spend on them and other aspects.
One thing that strikes me is that hobbies seem to have become a niche pastime these days. With so much social media, streaming, TV, and gaming going on, the traditional hobby seems to be in retreat and seems to be considered a thing for ‘geeks’. On the other hand, those ‘geeks’ are some of the more engaged people in the world these days so maybe hobbies are for everyone and hobbies are mainstream activities. Indeed, even though we consider ourselves to have less free time these days, the facts do not support that. I believe that we have more leisure time than previous generations. Here’s a study showing we had 7.8 more hours a week leisure time in 2003 compared to 1965.
In my opinion we are not as good as devoting time to entertaining ourselves anymore and this is a skill that needs practice like any other. I would guess that the trend is to more passive entertainment among a large part of the population. So I was thinking about that and realised that as a kid I used to have plenty of ‘activities’ and ‘hobbies’ but as I grew older I had less. So my goal is to change that positively now I am past the peaks of child care and developing a career. This may take me a long time to get good at entertaining myself again so I am trying many things. Of course, not everyone has the luxury of time to chase their dreams outside of work so I feel privileged to be able to explore this. My sympathy and empathy to those in less fortunate positions than me.
That thought leads me to the essence of my definition of a hobby. That it should be an activity related to active self entertainment. To that end, while of course following the latest series on Netflix could be construed as a hobby, I don’t view it as one. I think a hobby has to have an element of participation and engagement to count as something that is fulfilling. To me a hobby should be something that engages the mind and/or body and often both at the same time. For me a hobby will typically be productive and by that I mean it has outcomes, so that eliminates following celebs on social media ;-). Writing here is an example of a hobby.
As another example I think an activity like boating or sailing is a great hobby. The sailor is active physically, has to think about what is happening, has to engage fully and it takes a commitment of time. I would that say that going on a sailboat and sitting there while someone else does all the work is not a hobby. Similarly I don’t think you need to be so engaged that you must be an avid racer to consider it a hobby. It is as much a hobby because you have to tinker with the diesel engine to get it going as it is because you learn about the wind or to navigate. As you can tell, boating will be one of my themes. And I think you’ll see a connection between work and leisure.
I also think that crafting and creative arts in all their forms make great hobby material. They may not be physical, but they do engage the brain and most require fine motor control.
Interestingly, gaming does fall into the definition, especially is it is online with others. As it requires tactics and strategies, engagement, commitment of time, dexterity and social intercourse.
And volunteering of course, with the added bonus that it benefits society.
The other aspect that I’ve been thinking about is retirement. It’s a long way off but it occurred to me that once you stop working as hard, you need things to fill your time. And you need to practise for at least 10 years before the event. One of the big dangers of retirement is that your days are empty unless you have a social network and hobbies.
This is an introduction to give context on my writing as I will be saying more about many of these areas. Some of my writing will be very technical (my more geek hobbies closer to my work), other parts about society, maybe sports, definitely about my hobbies. We shall see how it goes.
Thanks for reading and I hope this has given you a reason to follow me and engage in the dialogue. I’ll challenge you all to engage actively (of course this is a writing community so you have a head start). Please also take the opportunity to comment.
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