Okay, I wish you all a Happy Valentine’s Day. I’ve outgrown Valentine’s, have gotten too old for them, so this morning I will teach and later I will engage in one of my hobbies. Either I will knit a sweater or crochet edgings on towels or sew buttons on some of my clothes whose buttons have fallen off.
Hey, I can do any of many things. You see, there are two kinds of people in the world: extroverts and introverts. Extroverts love to go out, check out places and things, make a lot of acquaintances, perhaps drink and eat a lot. That is their hobby. If you love to go shopping with friends but hate to go shopping alone, then shopping with friends is your hobby. These are a few of the hobbies of extroverts.
If you are an introvert, you actually enjoy being alone in the peace and quiet of your home. I am a certifiable introvert now who for the longest time pretended to be an extrovert when I was working in advertising. But really and truly, I am an introvert. I don’t like big groups of people. Yes, I go to big parties alone, say hello to whoever invited me, have a couple of glasses of wine, then disappear into thin air. I escape to go home because big parties bore me. I enjoy small groups of intimate friends and I have enough small groups of intimate friends to keep me happy.
What are my hobbies? You choose. I can cook, sew, crochet, knit, embroider, but I cannot do tatting. I can paint in watercolor, acrylic and even oil. I can make jewelry. I can decorate my home: make Easter, Thanksgiving, birthday, and Christmas decorations. If I think I want to do something, I end up doing it. People jump to the conclusion that I have many talents. I disagree. The main difference between people who don’t have hobbies and I is that I dare.
If I want to learn how to make something, I go to the secondhand bookstore and search the foreign magazine rack. There you will find sewing magazines, including a German magazine that inserts patterns, magazines for crochet, knitting, quilting, macramé, working with paper and scissors, beading, making wire jewelry. You will also find magazines on gardening, a fabulous hobby if you have a big garden, carpentry … all sorts of crafts. All you need to do is choose a magazine that looks like it might have something you want to make inside. Buy it, look through it, read instructions a few times until you understand them, then do it.
Okay, so the first time you fail. It doesn’t look quite like you want it to. That experience is not uniquely yours. Often that also happens to me until I have mastery of the craft. How many failures did I have before I learned how to knit competently? And let me tell you, when I knit sweaters I don’t think they are particularly attractive until one day I’m wearing one and I get a citation for being best-dressed. Or one of my friends starts to gush over the “lovely” sweater I’m wearing, until finally I am convinced that it is beautiful and I knit well. But in the beginning it was try, fail, try, fail, try again and again until finally you have one success. Then the success continues.
Just like jewelry. Ever since I was a little girl I used to enjoy stringing beads. But my talent for jewelry making stopped there, until I got old and decided to enroll in Portia Leuterio’s classes. Those I enjoyed immensely. I did not stop until I was convinced I had learned well enough. Then I stopped because I already knew what to do when. These days, I’m gathering steam to make jewelry again. I sort of got lazy for a while. Next week, I will start again.
I did not appreciate having hobbies until after I retired, when I had hardly any deadlines to meet anymore and a lot of time on my plate. Sometimes I would think, maybe I should die now; I am so bored. But then I would fix a drawer and come across some thread. Hmmm, maybe I can macramé this thread into a bag with my antique black and white beads. Then I work on it and in a few days I have a pretty bag with black and white antique beads. That makes me feel good. That makes me grateful I’m alive.
So enjoy Valentine’s Day tonight, though I am certain some of you will be a little bit bored. Sunday, think of something you would like to learn to do. Monday, go to the secondhand bookstore and look at the magazines. Then fall in love with your new hobby, even if your early work is imperfect.
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