Hobby Seasons
I have a lot of hobbies. When someone asks me about them, I'm not even sure what to say. There's things I only do for fun, and yet I make money from my photography, but surely that's one of my hobbies, too. Some things I only do for myself, like play guitar. Others, like my writing, are public, and I aim to only make them moreso. Yet while I strive to keep everything up at once, in practice, it comes and goes. I've always thought of my hobbies as waves: suddenly, I'll get deeply invested in cooking again for six months, trying out new techniques, new equipment, new recipes, and then it returns to the back burner, simmering while something else captures my attention.
I was recently watching a YouTube video from Odysseas about managing your hobbies. He has a lot of interesting tips, such as optimizing for energy, which I also think is important. But he raised the idea of hobbies having a "season," like produce. There are times when things are most ripe, and you're best able to capitalize on them. I bike a lot more in Spring, than I do in Winter. Why shouldn't everything be like this?
For me, the scale varies dramatically. In my habit tracking app, I can see the fluctuations of my interests at scale. For example, after a fairly intensive period of study, I put all my coding practice aside for several months; just wasn't a priority for a while. But now I'm easing myself back into it, reminding myself what I know how to do, hoping to forge new ground when all's said and done. Yet I can also see this happening on a much smaller scale sometimes. A few weeks ago, I joked that the previous week had been a "photography week," and the upcoming would be a "Japanese week." It was clear to me before it happened, and that came to fruition.
Some items I'm playing the long game on. I want to be a novelist above all else; I try and work on that a little at a time, knowing it's not something I can do overnight. Sometimes things need to be put aside to make room for something else. I stopped all my endurance training for six months while I focused entirely on strength training; don't want to burn weight when I'm trying to gain weight. But now I'm back in a balance with both, moving forward little by little. I try to balance things as much as I can. I've made minimal practice routines for several hobbies, like guitar, like chess: things I know I can knock out, "maintaining" what I have even when it's not my primary focus.
Sometimes I struggle with my ambition; though maybe that's too generous a phrase. My eyes can be bigger than my stomach. I've described myself as a generalist for as long as I can remember. When someone asks me what I do, I tend to list verbs: I write, I take photos, I speak Japanese. I wonder sometimes if things would be easier if I were to specialize more. Would I be more productive if I was less divided? Almost certainly. But where's the fun in that? I know what I know, and try my best to know where my limits lie.
When people talk about winning the lottery, of never working again, I say under those circumstances, I'd do nothing: which is to say, I'd do everything. I'd let my interests, passion, and ambition guide me, exploring what most captivated me at any moment. I think it would look a lot like how I'm living now, at a different scale.
I never worry about putting a hobby to the side for a week, a month. Because I know eventually, my interest will return to it. Maybe I'm not ready for it now, or maybe something else has taken priority for some reason. But it'll have its day in the Sun. I'll come back to it, with all the knowledge I've accumulated across everything else that I do. And when I pick it up this time, I'll take it further than I could've before. It's all with me, always.
