How to: hobbies & side projects
People with interesting hobbies are typically the type of people I want to spend time with. Jack in the office has an enviable trainer collection and collects pin badges and comics. He’s also really into house plants, Fallout games and assorted themes of trinkets. Jack is into a lot of things. My dad collected Discworld paraphernalia for years and has a couple of lightsabers and a Bobba Fett helmet in his Star Wars collection. I have friends who cycle often and for fun, who play tennis twice a week, make beer at home, collect cameras, or whisky, and who have enviable jazz record collections. These people find these things interesting enough to care about enjoying regularly and with vigour and these things add joy and value to their lives. And I find these people interesting as a result. I love nothing more than listening to my dad nerd out about Discworld stamps — something I have no personal interest in.
Beyond the fact that I feed off the energy of people who talk passionately about something that they love, I find that the people in my life that have deep interests or hobbies are more interesting — sorry, people who don’t have hobbies — although that doesn’t extend to passive interests like the television they watch. They need to be active interests — things that they really buy into, quite literally in some cases, or do. The time I spend listening to people talk about their hobbies is a break from the usual conversations that I have with them — which is about work or life stuff. It’s a nice break from the norm.
For my part, I’m currently enjoying building Lego, playing Skyrim (for the fifth time) and collecting — and then leafing slowly through, whilst making appreciative noises as I admire the details and paper stock — Field Notes notepads. I will try to do all three of those things this week, despite the fact that I have a reasonably intense workload, a friend visiting from Chicago, a business plan to write and a toddler who’s being trained to stay in his bed at night for more than two hours, as well as the people in my life that I want to talk to and spend time with. But make time for them I’ll definitely try to do. The quest I will go on this evening in Tamriel, when the family are in bed, will remove all of the useless remnants of today from my brain, leaving an empty brain and a clean ‘to do’ list to pick back up in the morning. And that’s primarily why I have any of the hobbies that I have — they’re time for me to occasionally do something that I want to do and enjoy, that isn’t the stuff that I usually do.
Hobbies are an opportunity for a refresh. Focusing on making a Lego set for an hour or two (but, hopefully, three) and getting myself comfortable and away from distraction so that I can concentrate on the task at hand feels like a complete luxury. The ritual of cracking the box open carefully, thumbing through the instructions and carefully spreading the bags out so that I can take in what I’ve got with a coffee or a beer in my hand gets me started.
In those first moments I’ve begun to forget about everything else — my mind is getting focused on the task at hand. Then I split the bags and spread the bricks out onto the table, removing the bigger pieces and leaving them to one side, so that I can figure out how much space I’ll need and where I can put my coffee or beer down. I’ll typically also make room for a snack — although I don’t have a favourite Lego-making snack as yet. And then I get to it, piece by piece, guided by the instructions and usually without a break, I’ll build the fucker until it takes shape.
I’ll usually stop as the model begins to reveal sections from its final form to marvel at the thing I’m making. At this point I couldn’t give a single shit about the things I gave a massive shit about a couple of hours earlier. I’m in peak flow state — my attention is only on the thing I’m now doing.
I’ll often find a cold coffee or warm beer when I next remember that I’m thirsty. If the set is a large set, I may even break these sessions up over a few days or weeks, until the set is made. But after each session of building I feel renewed, satisfied with the thing that I’ve made, and almost always simply studying the details of something I’ve built for a couple of hours gives me new perspective on the things that I was on my mind before I started. I can see the component parts and feel more refreshed to tackle life again, usually straight away — unless I’ve had too much beer, in which case I go for a nap.
I think within that lies the importance of hobbies for me. I get excited about the time I’ll spend doing them — it’s something to look forward beyond the external responsibilities and things that I have to do as an adult man, husband, dad, family member, friend, citizen and professional. It’s one for me — at least, that’s how I consider it. I cherish every second that I spend doing them.
It’s also time that I fight for and defend, because I know that ultimately I feel better for having spent time doing the things I consider cherished hobbies. Gaming and Lego-making are things that I use to switch my brain off from the real world and enter my own personal cathedral. I always walk out the other side of them feeling like I’ve had a good break without actually having gone on a holiday. Although I’d argue, and have done, that a visit to the Capital Wasteland, Rapture or Dunwall counts as a mini-break of sorts — though I’d still prefer it if I could afford to visit Paris or Amsterdam as a weekly hobby.
Side projects at work work in much the same way. This book, and the magazine that we’ve been working on en route to writing it; the pop-up newspaper that led to the magazine, which is where Fiona and I began working together, all started as side projects for me. I’ve been fascinated by magazines and newspapers and how they worked, enough to collect them and read, listen to and watch everything I could on how they work as businesses throughout a large portion of my 20s and early 30s (a hobby). Me trying to make them began as projects outside of the scope of the usual day to day work — the things that put food on my table and, later, nappies on my son’s arse. Things that we wanted to try together as a collaborative group — largely with no great ambition for how they might turn out — although we wanted them to not lose money. But they always started with an investment of time or cash, or both — just like a lot of hobbies do.
Side projects occasionally become something that can end up contributing to the food on the table and nappy fund — but they don’t have to. A side project like blogging can go on being something that you enjoy doing forever, without it ever needing to contribute to anything other than your happiness. If it feeds your interests and you enjoy doing it, do you ever need it do more than that? Trying to make a living off something you enjoy doing in this way can take the shine off what was once an enjoyable activity and quickly turn it into something that you need a hobby to take a break from. And that’s a big risk.
Both hobbies and side projects allow space for discovery. Trying new things is a sure-fire way to bring variety to your life and work — new skills, new ideas, a fresh perspective or new solutions to old problems. It is a risk free way to get those benefits. If you realise you don’t enjoy doing the thing after a while, you can stop doing it and do something else instead. You can pick it up and put it down as often as you like — it’s your time, your interests to feed, your thing on the side, your life.
Side projects can also lead you into new social circles — again, a voyage of discovery and an opportunity to learn. The Awesome Foundation Liverpool, a micro-philanthropic group in my home city, which is part of a network of Awesome chapters across the world, was something I wanted to try as a way to support interesting grassroots projects. In joining, I met nine other people I might not have met otherwise (we each give £50 per month to give away in £500 monthly grants to awesome projects).
Becoming a trustee has exposed me to the lives of nine other people who do interesting things here, as well as the people who’ve applied for and won a grant from us. It has massively expanding my network in the city but also introduced me to new things that I’d never have learned about otherwise. But it’s also given me the opportunity to visit Ottawa, Washington and Seattle for gatherings of Awesome Foundation Chapters from around the world, where I’m met and befriended people I almost certainly would never have met otherwise — some of whom I’ve also worked with or written about. Being involved in Awesome is something I invest in — but, more importantly, it has all the added benefits of a good hobby that refreshes me.
In much the same way, my Field Notes collection recently led me to join a Facebook group. Field Nuts is where over 4,000 people from around the world come to talk about something I’m interested in. I have no idea who these people are, what they do or who they vote for, but we chat about our shared enjoyment of the stationery we commonly like. I can easily enjoy Field Notes on my own — but being part of a group of 4,000 means that I can also communally geek out whenever I feel the need to.
Hobbies and side projects are great for confidence building. I often find that people who’re typically reserved when talking about work or life generally, become confident and alive when talking about their passions. We recently had a work placement student who I thought might actually want to disintegrate the minute she set foot in the office, such was her shyness. But she turned into the most engaging, interesting and talkative people I’ve met this year when we started talking about Marvel comic books.
And I get that. I am that person, too. I love spending time with people and meeting new people, but it takes me a long while (or a pint or two of good beer) to warm up in social situations, if I do at all. But if you get me talking about one of my hobbies you’ll struggle to get me to stop. Enough about me, what are you into?
