How to Be a More Interesting Person
I’ve taught myself to knit on a loom. In the last few days, I’ve made two scarves, two adult-sized hats, and three baby-sized hats. I’m quite proud of myself.
Maybe I didn’t need another hobby — after all, every moment that I spend knitting is a moment I didn’t spend writing — but I think hobbies have value. My twin sister is teaching herself to crochet (which is much, much harder than knitting on a loom). Her goal is to have hobbies, to be a well-rounded person. Crocheted items are just a bonus.
When I taught high school, I tried to let my students choose their own writing topics as often as possible. However, there were students — a good number of students — who couldn’t come up with anything to write about. I’d do my best to help them:
Me: What do you do in your spare time?
Student: *shrugs*
Me: Do you have hobbies?
Student: *shakes head*
Me: What’s your favorite TV show?
Student: I don’t watch TV.
Me: So what do you do when you’re not at school?
Student: *blank stare*
And, oh, how blank that stare could be. The emptiness of their eyes suggested maybe they really did just go home and stare at a blank wall.
My goal in life is to be the opposite of these blank wall people. For a while, I found myself spending more and more of my spare time on Facebook or Instagram. Social media, while not a blank wall, is only a slight improvement over doing absolutely nothing, especially as more and more people use it as a platform for sharing Tik Tok videos. Every time I watch a Tik Tok video, I can feel my brain cells committing suicide.
I recently read a very good story by Orrin Onken, (linked below) about his many hobbies — and how hobbies can be dropped for a time and picked up again later. This is, in fact, one of the best reasons to develop a multitude of hobbies — because you don’t have to do all of them all of the time. You can develop a hobby and then move on to something new. I’ve had a number of hobbies through the years, and I come back to them when the mood strikes me — or when I run out of soap or sign up for a bookmark exchange. Then I can call upon my soap-making hobby to restock my inventory, or I can open up that gallon jar of mod podge and get out my scrapbook paper to craft some artsy fartsy bookmarks.
Hobbies make people interesting. They give life texture. They give us something to talk about when the conversation begins to lag.
Most hobbies center around developing a set of skills. There are hobbies that are not skill-based, such as stamp collecting, but even these hobbies develop a person’s expertise in something. Although I hope to never be cornered in a conversation with someone who can expound endlessly about the history and variety of postage stamps, I can at least appreciate those people from afar. They have something to write about.
My Aunt Daisy lived deep into her nineties, and her mind stayed sharp until the very end. She was a woman who read widely and who practiced many hobbies. I have a coffee cup she painted and some jewelry that she made. I’m certain her mind stayed sharp because it was kept busy her whole life. Aunt Daisy didn’t have time to stare at a blank wall. She kept her mind — and hands — busy.
Another benefit of most hobbies — when the hobbyist is gone, they leave something of themselves behind. When I’m gone, my family will have more hats and scarves than they know what to do with. They’ll have poetry and stories and journals. They’ll have all kinds of items that have been decoupaged with that gallon of mod podge.
My goal this year is to get really good at knitting. Apparently, it is possible to loom knit a sweater, so that is my ultimate goal. I have a book called Crafting with Cat Hair — maybe I can make cat hair yarn and use it to knit cat sweaters. After that, maybe I’ll learn to make jewelry or weave baskets. The possibilities are endless.
As promised, here’s Orrin Onken’s story about hobbies. If you don’t already follow him, you probably should. Your life would be better, and you would laugh more than you do.
