This year my pumpkins died. Not a farmer by any stretch, I nevertheless aspired to yield a massive patch for the Hallow-season, envisioning hearty fruit sprawling across my backyard, ripe for picking, carving, and smashing. For several July weeks, hopes were high. Curling tendrils crossed the ground, leaves pluming of prehistoric size. Then, August. A few small gourds appeared before the vines scorched like toast. I returned from vacation to find, among weeds, puddles of orange goop. They had liquefied in the heat.
Netflix
I took it harder than expected, torn up not simply by the death of my inanimate orange comrades but also by the death of a vague dream, only briefly entertained, of me: central Virginia’s great agriculturist. Silly, but not crazy.
In a recent op-ed for The New York Times (ht CB), Tim Wu addressed this exhausting credo, noting the negative corollaries it delivers: how our emphasis on excellence hampers non-professional creative endeavors. When it comes to hobbies, Wu says, we proceed with caution:
We’re afraid of being bad at them. Or rather, we are intimidated by the expectation — itself a hallmark of our intensely public, performative age — that we must actually be skilled at what we do in our free time. Our “hobbies,” if that’s even the word for them anymore, have become too serious, too demanding, too much an occasion to become anxious about whether you are really the person you claim to be.
…the demands of excellence are at war with what we call freedom. For to permit yourself to do only that which you are good at is to be trapped in a cage whose bars are not steel but self-judgment.
Self-judgment indeed. It seems to be the sad Rome to which all roads lead. After all, something can only be judged as excellent.
The Times have been concerned for a while now about the decline of unambitious American past-times. In May, Jaya Saxena wrote a striking column in which she confessed, “Last spring, I forgot the word for hobby”; her brain-fart was “telling.” Saxena emphasizes the importance of leisure for leisure’s sake, not for any evaluative outcome: “By viewing work as something we do to support our leisure time, rather than our hobbies as something to lower our stress so we can get back to work, we can actually start enjoying our lives.” As with many things, however, leisure is not so pure-of-heart. Saxena brakes, and qualifies:
It’s worth mentioning that for many people, there are structural impediments to hobbies and leisure time. It’s easier to have a hobby if you have things like a steady salary, affordable rent and reliable child care. If you’re working two jobs and are on food stamps, you’re a lot less likely to take up watercolors.
After reading that, no way am I taking up watercolors! It’s like, the busier we seem, the more righteous, the less complicit.
It may be helpful to consider what the most excellent man in history did for fun. By my reading, he seems to hardly have had time to sleep between calming the storms and raising the dead and delivering incendiary speeches about dying for his friends. Frankly, he does not seem like much of a fun guy. Fiercely loving, without a doubt, but also at times scathing. And fully occupied with the task at hand. Not much of a hobbyist, as far as I can tell.
It seems Saxena is right, then, that there is a measure of privilege in making something mediocre, something that benefits no one, a privilege that a man as good as Jesus could not afford. In so many ways, though, we are not like him. He came into the world to save it; we are who he came to save. We are the hobbyists, he, the worker. “Leisure,” Tim Wu writes, “is a hard-won achievement.” Which, thanks be to God, has been won for us.
This year my pumpkins died. I’m not very good at gardening, and I doubt I’ll be any better next year. But I think I’ll try again.
COMMENTS
11 responses to “Not Very Good at This: On Hobbying for Hobbying’s Sake”
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sorry about your pumpkins 🙁
Stiff upper lip – it’s just pumpkins. I failed miserably in a five-year experiment with keeping bees. I know colony collapse and all that, but I still feel a bit like a mass eco-murderer.
Thank you for this timely reminder of the gospel. My husband and I are on an anniversary trip to Europe we’ve been saving and planning for for 27 years. The guilt of taking a vacation, the “privilege” of this kind of travel experience, and the performance expectations with which I’ve loaded this visit were threatening to ruin the joy of just being here together. Your article has reminded me that because Jesus died, I can live! All is grace.
How many opportunities for joy and peace have I shipwrecked by chasing the siren song of “doing it right?”
Well said my friend, thank you for the reminder.
Hey CJ–I’m sorry about your pumpkins. What a bummer. 🙁
I love your comment about whether Jesus had a ‘hobby’:
‘It may be helpful to consider what the most excellent man in history did for fun. By my reading, he seems to hardly have had time to sleep between calming the storms and raising the dead and delivering incendiary speeches about dying for his friends. Frankly, he does not seem like much of a fun guy. Fiercely loving, without a doubt, but also at times scathing. And fully occupied with the task at hand. Not much of a hobbyist, as far as I can tell.’
I’ll keep this description in mind. Thanks!
Simply, I just love to kayak.
Social media and the proliferation of niche websites dedicated to every hobby known may make being a hobbyist harder. All the group wisdom and insider knowledge that people had to fight to get is now available online at your fingertips. It’s hard to own the quirky love of your hobby when you suddenly learn that a few hundred thousand love it too, and you are just a tiny participant surely lacking in consummate skill and knowledge, which is no longer a good thing that drives you forward. And the worst reality is that everyone is now competing in your hobby space to be a better hobbyist than you are, and they are succeeding
Sometimes, ignorance is bliss. I wish I could roll back my experiences in board gaming, fountain pens, and drumming back to those days when I was the sole board gamer, drummer, fountain pen user most people knew. Oh well.
I’d like to think that your dead pumpkins still embedded some seeds in your backyard! Until next year!