It was an afternoon in February, I was visiting my grandparents in their home in Germany and my grandma was somewhere in the middle of a monologue (this is normal). My grandma is super chatty, and she loves sharing all sorts of unrequested advice. Like that people are omnivores, and you need to eat cheese (she's French, need I say more?), and that soy products are bad for women. I will regret eating all that tofu when I want to have children. Didn't I know? everybody in France seems to know.
The book lying open on my lap was waiting to be read, but I had myself to thank for that: I had just told my grandma that I stopped drawing -- a hobby we both share. This spurred an impassioned speech: just you wait until you're older, people always come back to the same hobbies. Great. Calls on authority and "oh just you wait until you're grown up". Teenage me really wanted to leave, now.
Her words really stuck, though. I have thought about this conversation many, MANY times. Now, after a pretty long time, I've come to realise how true it is. We do always come back to the same hobbies.
I always get super restless on weekends, even though I have the whole day to read and watch movies. It's like an itch I can't scratch, and I tried many different strategies to deal with this.
For example, I used to game quite a lot for a while. I thought this would solve my problem because it was more active than just consuming content. Gaming is fun and keeps me occupied, but the itch didn't go away.
Because of that, I ended up feeling anxious at the end of a weekend or of a staycation. It kept me wondering what went wrong: I went into the weekend looking forward to all that reading, all that relaxation, but instead I was just biting my nails.
Until finally, I came across the idea of creative inflow vs creative outflow: creative people get burnt out from consuming stuff, not from making things[^1]. OH, I thought. See where I'm going?
Turns out that this is very true for me. I can now stop the itch very consistently by switching to something more creative, like drawing, painting, or writing. It's pretty silly, though -- in a very convoluted way, I have now discovered that I like the things I knew I liked .
I don't think we necessarily come back to all our childhood hobbies - I rode horses for 10 years of my life, but I don't see myself doing that any time soon. I absolutely loved it, but like with many things in my life, I stopped doing it in high school because i got too busy.
BUT I think the reason we don't come back to all of them is the simple fact that we simply cannot do everything we want in life. It is way more rewarding (for me) to spend a good chunk of time on a hobby and have it really be a part of my life, versus having 20 different ones (lord knows that there certainly are enough things I love doing to fill multiple lifetimes. 🎵 1 dag is veel te kort, for the dutchies here. )
The things we value and enjoy really don't change that much. What I loved about horse riding was the connection you got with the horse, like when you pause to enjoy the soft feel of their nose, and listen to the sound of their breathing. I get the exact same feeling now when I smell horses.
Or, though I don't regularly sing anymore and I don't know when I will ever join a choir again, choir music still sends shivers up my spine. Not just because it's beautiful, but because it reminds me of the feeling of singing together with other people, of our voices weaving together into something that's more than the sum of its parts. (Listen to this if you're not convinced.)
I'm just saying, if you really love doing something, that's not just going to disappear because you haven't done it for a while. So have a go at one of your childhood hobbies, and maybe listen to your grandma's advice.
Still don't think I will regret drinking soy milk, though.
[^1]: Ness Labs - Escape the Algorithm
February 19, 2023
EssaysThe impostor syndrome - every PhD student gets it at some point, or so I’m told. For me, it’s hard to disentangle from my own perfectionism: I’m tempted to think whatever I do is not good enough, regardless of how good I think I am at something compared to other people.
December 16, 2023
EssaysI used to dream about storage space, even before I had to worry about it. Those dreams were magical and fun, so I want to revisit them. Take a stroll down memory lane with me!
