One Hobby is Never Enough

My husband probably thinks I have too many hobbies, since all their accompanying accoutrements take up a lot of space in our house. My shelves are filled with books because I like to read. Stacks of fabric, a sewing machine, and notions take up one corner of “my” room, standing by for when I feel like sewing. I also have yarn and crochet hooks for when the mood strikes, and an easel, paints, and canvases for creating masterpieces. This does not include the piano and guitars in our living room, my files of travel articles, or stacks of cookbooks and cabinets of bake ware for their accompanying hobbies. Hobbies require a lot of stuff.

I thought about hobbies this weekend at the dog park when I watched a man fly a model plane over the nearby soccer field. I have seen him before, and he stands on an embankment with the controller in his hands, moving his plane in graceful loops and circles and dives while most people don’t even notice.

Everyone needs a hobby. And no, watching TV, playing video games, or surfing the web are not hobbies. Real hobbies make you think, but not too hard. Their aim is to get you away from your daily stresses, away from work or normal life. They automatically connect you to other people with similar interests - people with whom you might not associate in other ways.

A man next to me in the dog park mentioned that in northern Las Vegas, there is an aviary park where all the plane-flying-people can fly together. He said people show up there towing twelve-foot planes. They’re serious.

My hobbies are fairly normal, I think. But I admire people with unusual ones. My cousin has a beehive and raises geese. My uncle plays on an amateur hockey team and has a collection of rare guitars. My brother-in-law races model cars. A friend collects model trains and goes to train conventions. It would be so cool to say that I am a spelunker or a rower or that I pilot a hot air balloon or have a collection of petrified dinosaur poop.

One thing I know is that I don’t want to turn a hobby into a profession. That would add an underlying money-related stress to something I love. Why do that?