Already There.
She hunted for a hobby for years, feeling defective – and found it mid-workout, exactly where it had been all along.
The complaint is instantly familiar: everyone has a hobby – the daily-sport people, the readers, the singers – and she has nothing. She uses a harder word for what that made her feel: defective. And she did what most of us do with that feeling – tried to force someone else's interests onto herself, at the worst possible moments.
The turn comes twenty minutes before the post, mid-pilates: she does sport every day. She reads everything she can hold, even with a baby. Her series list runs ten years deep. Nothing was missing – except the looking. Being Whole makes the same claim from the quiet end: what you are searching for is not somewhere else, and the deficit dissolves the moment the gaze comes home. Her sharper version: we devalue ourselves first, and call the rest luck.
She ends by asking her readers what their hobby is. Fair warning: you probably have one already.
I think this will resonate with many. Until today I looked at others and thought: everyone has a hobby, and I don't. Someone does sport every day, someone reads, someone sings and so on. And me – nothing, no way. I considered myself somehow defective. Kept trying to find that damn hobby. To impose other people's interests on myself, especially in moments when I wasn't ready for them.
And then today, literally twenty minutes ago, I was doing a pilates workout and it hit me: I do sport every day – how is that not a hobby? How am I different from that lady I saw yesterday on Instagram and envied: “look at her, sport every day”.
And I adore books – I've reread everything there is; even with a child I find time to read.
And how I love series – my list is ten years deep😂
And I have all of it. But for some reason we're used to looking at others and not at ourselves. And devaluing ourselves first of all, finding excuses and saying “how lucky the others are”.
Do you have a hobby? Which one?)
Thank you for reading.
If her words reached somewhere mine don't – good. That's what this blog is for. Take what fits and leave the rest.
– Jan