Just Wondering

[ladysprite]

What do people without hobbies do? I know they exist; as far as I can tell in just about any workplace the vast majority of the people there just don't have any real interests or activities they participate in outside of their job. So.... what do they do with their time?

I've got a half-day today. I spent the morning shopping for ingredients for recipes to try at this weekend's SCA Cook's Guild meeting and starting preparatory cooking for that; while the eggs were boiling I worked on translating the next part of a period Italian cookbook. Now I'm going to work on writing up part of a period dance manual; if that gets boring I have a shawl I'm crocheting that I can work on. Tonight I'm having friends over for a gaming session. Last night was dance practice, this weekend is Cook's Guild, the weekend after that is a gaming convention.

If I didn't have any outside interests, I think I'd end up just growing into the sofa. I can't fathom that lifestyle.

Comments

[z-gryphon.livejournal.com]

I suspect it's just that most people in any given workplace don't care to discuss their outside interests with their co-workers. I know I don't.

[ladysprite.livejournal.com]

Yes and no. I'm a fairly gregarious person, and in at least a few of the places where I've worked, I've gotten to be friends with most of my coworkers. We've gotten together for dinner, gone out together, and generally chatted about most of the details of our lives. And as a whole, most of them.... just didn't do anything. They looked at my hobbies, and speculated aloud that I was insane, and when I asked them what they did in their spare time they just drew a blank.

It was the same with a lot of my classmates in vet school, too.

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

I'll bet a lot of them didn't feel that they had any spare time. What with job, housework, raising kids (and kids are a HUGE time-sink, as I've had occasion to find out!), maybe taking care of elderly parents... it's easy to fall into the mindset that you'll do something for yourself after everything that SHOULD be done is done, and that never happens because there's always something else that you SHOULD be doing.

And watching TV is a huge time-sink too, if you actually watch it (by which I mean that your attention is focused on the TV as if you were seeing a movie in the theater), rather than just having it on in the background. But most people don't think of that as a hobby.

[antoniseb.livejournal.com]

Everyone does *something*, but a lot of them have hobbies that they regard as too boring to others to discuss. It might be as common-place as trying to raise their children [a real time-sink, but doing it well requires some focus]. It might be as disorganized as trying to see every old movie of a particular genre, with no real intent to use the culture gained therein.

Some people don't think of these as hobbies, but just do them: yard maintenance, cooking nice dinners [nicer than I would], finding nice wine [or whiskey], lingere, scrapbooking, church-groups... Granted, not all of these are as wide-ranging as SCA or LARPs, but its what people do.

[siderea]

Watch TV. Especially sporting events.

Go to bars.

Nest. (Work on their homes.)

Workaholicism

Parent.

Party.

[mindways]

siderea's list seems pretty accurate, at least insofar as the sense I've gotten on the matter.

(This page references an average TV-viewing of 4 hours/day...and for every one of us who watches little or no TV (hi!) there's someone out there who's watching nearly twice as much as that average, or multiple people somewhat above that average.)

[griffinick.livejournal.com]

Housework can take up an immense amount of time, and if you are also working full-time at a demanding and exhausting job and raising a family, I can understand entirely how it could appear that you do nothing else but watch TV.
However, are there things they would like to do but don't feel that they have the timefor now? I know my parents starting doing all sorts of things upon retirement (my mom learned to play the harp, got into photography, beaded jewelry and crocheting; my dad became more political and volunteers at a billion different homeless shelters/soup kitchens; they're also both traveling more, taking internet history and art courses and doing more gardening), and I would assume that might be the case for a lot of people.

[mindways]

*nod* I'd mentally lumped housework in with siderea's "Nest. (Work on their homes.)" category; I should have said so explicitly.

(It may also worth noting that "4 hours spent watching TV" doesn't necessarily translate to "4 hours spent doing nothing else" - I know some people watch TV while (say) doing the dishes. Or stuff like knitting, but that gets back into the "hobbies" realm.)

[hfcougar.livejournal.com]

I've read other entries on what you do on your days on and your days off, and unless I'm just way off the scale, I do have one observation - I don't think most people have as much energy as you do. Even given that I have a lot less energy than most people do, I still think I'm right about this.

In my free time, I sleep. Or do my homework, or catch up on LiveJournal and the Guinea Pig Daily Digest. During the summer, when I didn't have classes, I spent a lot of non-work time sewing or acquiring things for sewing garb, and some time shopping for camping equipment and other supplies, but I think of those less as "hobbies" than "stuff I have to take care of".

Like I said, I could be out of touch. No, I know I am. Depression adds an unknown quantity to everything, and for every day on which I get some incredible amount of things done, there are about fifteen or twenty on which after I've done the things I must do (go to work, go to class) doing my homework or taking a shower is an achievement.

I also agree with the "non-hobby activity" suggestions. I used to spend a lot of time reading, and watching movies on video. I wouldn't call either of those a hobby, though they did add enrichment to my life. But they accounted for a not insignificant amount of my free time. LiveJournal is similar - it's important to me to at least try to keep current with what my friends are thinking and feeling and doing, and it does sometimes suck up a lot of time, but I wouldn't call it a hobby per se.

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

I suspect they watch that electronic box thing... you know, the one the DVD player is hooked up to.