Looking for some metaphorical sprinkles to spice up your vanilla custard life? Learn how to find new hobbies.
I’ve probably tried them all – sewing, ukelele playing, tarot card reading and cooking. But isn’t flavor the spice of… what’s that word, again?
Last fall, I read an amazing book (/potential how to guide for dreamers) by Elizabeth Gilbert called Big Magic.
It’s about connecting with your creative side. The book is more of a series of essays about creativity, but one of the many crucial points she makes is that you need to experiment with different mediums and activities to find what you’re interested in.
I leveraged my experience with random side jobs and odd interests to put together an offbeat guide on discovering how to find new hobbies.
Don’t take it too seriously.
Hobbies are supposed to be fun. When I took up the ukelele, I had a little talk with myself.
“Melissa,” I instructed. “This is your LAST chance to flirt with music.”
Needless to say, after two lessons, I quit. I didn’t really feel a strong connection to it, and in hindsight, it was because I put too much pressure on myself to succeed at it. The only thing I really remember about my ukelele phase was sitting on the cement porch of my shared house in Oakwood, outside of downtown Raleigh.
I strummed my fingers across the chords, humming to myself and jotting down some potential lyrics. It wasn’t perfect or inspirational, it was just a quiet moment I spent poking at this pretty, magical little thing.
But it went away. I scared it off.
Try something new but don’t assign it a role in your life. Just let it be what it is, until it becomes something more.
Multi-Task
Maia, a friend of mine from college, is a jack of all trades girl that lives out in Wyoming. She does an array of things professionally: she’s a graphic designer, the US rep for a shoe company and a server at a local Indian restaurant. She’s also dabbled in voiceover work.
You don’t have to be married to one thing. While some people are creative monogamists (for me, it’s writing) other people open themselves up to a little of everything. Even when I got a second job atop my 9-5, I wondered if it was okay to break the narrative. You know, the one that reads: “Thou shall not be a project manager and a waitress at the same time!”
It wasn’t until I started to do more than one thing that I realized how stagnant the first thing had become. I still liked it, but it was like a sweater that I had outgrown. The color was great, but now I couldn’t button it up without feeling like I couldn’t breathe.
I find that when you blend in the new with the old, you figure pretty quickly whether or not that old thing suits you anymore. The less desired hobbies will far away in contrast to the more intriguing ones.
Get all Diane Lane about it.
This one is going to need a little context for the men out there. There’s this movie, Under the Tuscan Sun, where Diane Lane plays a sad divorced woman. The first part of the film is actually pretty depressing, as her character is basically falling apart as her husband leaves her for another woman.
But as she decides to move to Tuscany and loses herself in a house restoration (I hate when that happens, right?) she gets super renaissancey and new agey about it. Fast forward to her praying to a Saint and wearing big flowly dresses everywhere.
Romance your hobbies. Wine and dine them. Go sit in a restaurant and drink wine as you write that poem. Take that astronomy book on a drive. Park your car, climb on the roof with a flashlight, and read it under the stars.
You get it. Don’t bore the hell out of your hobbies. Make them want to stick around.
Don’t turn away the weird ones.
One of my favorite scenes in Eat, Pray, Love is when Elizabeth Gilbert is sitting in a bathtub reading an Italian dictionary. She looks defeated, but she lets the exotic words and phrases stumble out of her mouth. There’s no explanation as to why she wants to learn Italian, it just speaks to her.
The random, unexplained hobbies is where the magic is.
I mean, look at me. Iceland. Iceland is a hobby of mine. I love reading about it, I follow Icelandic reporters on Facebook, I still write about it constantly, and yeah, you can bet your sweet ass I’m going back.
But it doesn’t really make sense.
It doesn’t have to.
Let yourself be weird. I’d rather be weird and happy than “normal” and bored.
Screw your age.
I’m 29, and any day now, I’m going to pick up a mountain bike and go for a ride. I’ve thought about taking self defense classes. I wrote a post about two years back about not putting yourself in a box. I still hold true to that.
I once read an article about a 70 year old woman who spent ten years becoming an expert on Ancient Mesopotamia culture. Why? Because she just felt called to it. Amelia Earhart flew her first plane at 23. Jon Hamm didn’t land Mad Men until he was in his 40s.
See a trend here?
Don’t procrastinate.
Practice doing the most you can with the least amount of resources. Want to try photography? Go for a walk with your phone and snap some pictures. You don’t need brand new paint brushes to be an artist, a built up portfolio to be a designer, or a published book to be a writer.
Don’t let your inexperience give you an excuse to procrastinate. Just go have some fun. See what happens.
Go ahead, suck at it.
When I first joined my kickball team, I felt really embarrassed at how bad I was at it. I mean, I was bad.
I couldn’t run very fast or kick far. I just kind of laughed it off and accepted it, and practiced when I could. It wasn’t like I wanted to be a professional kickballer or anything. Not sure if that actually exists, anyway.
My teammate Jordan said something one day that changed my perspective on it. He was frustrated that one of the team members was a poor sport (or something similar to that, I don’t recall exactly), and I laughed and pointed out:
“Well, at least so and so is a good player. I suck.”
“So?” he said. “At least you try.”
At least you try. Effort matters. A lot of people pack away ideas, goals or interests because they just don’t want to bother doing the dirty work.
To recap: Go out and have some fun. Don’t weigh it down with expectations.
Have more tips? Comments, please!