You can tell a lot about someone by their Amazon purchases — or at least, you should be able to. According to my browsing history, one could come to the conclusion I’m anything from a witchy gardening stage magician to a bartender who moonlights as a one-man band with a killer pumpkin bread recipe.
Trying new hobbies is, in a way, my main hobby. I find new interests at the drop of a hat, which makes it a miracle I haven’t looked into haberdashery.
It could be because learning new skills through acquiring a hobby is the fun part, or more likely because I have an attention span that would make a goldfish jealous.
I invite you to come along with me on a journey through some of my previous endeavors before the road gets any longer.
It’s only a matter of time before I pull the trigger on getting a pair of stilts.
Music
Ah, the flute. All the elegance of a sweet summer breeze captured in shimmering silver. Such a beautiful sound in the hands of anyone other than me, who was so bad at it in sixth grade I effectively gave up on traditional instruments forever.
In my search for more eclectic musical alternatives to briefly learn then forget about, I’ve acquired a melodica, ocarina, kalimba and otamatone. This excludes the cowhorn and water whistle, which are relegated to use as Renaissance faire accessories.
While I haven’t mastered any of the instruments in my collection, I learned how to play at least some snippets of songs on most of them.
There were a surprising amount of resources for learning how to play instruments that I thought were relatively niche, and it was fun to be a part of their communities.
Kalimbas have a charming music box-like chime and are used in songs featured in “Minecraft” and “Avatar: The Last Airbender.” The ocarina is similarly relevant in pop culture but I found out very quickly that the miniature strawberry-shaped version I chose for the aesthetic was not going to be as versatile as one with the standard number of holes.
Otamatones are delightful but difficult to learn, though it probably would have been easier if its batteries hadn’t spontaneously disintegrated.
Weird little instruments give me a lot of joy, even if my time learning the melodica probably only brought despair upon anyone within two blocks. Imagine someone described what an accordion sounded like to you and then you had a bad dream about it — that’s a melodica.
Baking
There is a drawer in my fridge so stuffed full of sugar and different types of flour that if my house burned down, it would turn into a cake.
Baking is probably one of my longest-running hobbies. I’ve made everything from cakes and cookies to Oreo cream cheese bonbons. At my best, I was making caramel from scratch to drizzle on warm homemade butterscotch pudding. At my worst — well, I don’t think I could even call that unholy abomination a cheesecake.
My baking frenzy slowed around the COVID-19 lockdown when, ironically, I had too much time to bake and got overwhelmed with the possibilities. While I’m not quite as prolific with my pastries as I was a few years ago, my collection of recipe books marked with cocoa powder thumbprints still stand like sweet sentinels on my shelf, ready for use.
There is no better feeling than bringing a baked good to a social gathering or event and seeing people enjoy it. Knowing that you were able to create something people like makes that time you messed up a cake so bad your friend threw it in a bush and it became an inside joke worth it.
Fortune-telling
How else could I get the editors to publish my article about bread clip science? Of course I had a foray into witchcraft.
My witchy phase involved a lot of crystals, candles and baking — quite literally sweetness and light. It was only a matter of time until the siren song of those beautiful boxes of tarot cards behind the Copperfield’s Books register drew me to cartomancy.
Whether you believe tarot cards can read the future or not, it’s fun to learn the meanings of each card and their reversals. They’re not as specific as horror movies might have you think; death does not mean you are going to die!
If anything, it’s the broadness of the meanings that allows you to apply them to your life in a way that invites introspection. In my experience, tarot revealed more about myself than it did clues about my future.
I had brief interests in other forms of fortune-telling like runework and pendulum reading but the pretty pendulums were too expensive and the DIY set of sea glass runes still sits unused in my bedside drawer. My tarot card decks also haven’t seen much use these days but with how uncertain the future is, now might be the perfect time for their wisdom to make a comeback.
Video game development
I have a 70-page prologue for a visual novel about a circus sitting in my Google Drive collecting dust. Next!
Mixology
My smoothie-making phase, all grown up! I come from a long line of caterers and bartenders who don’t get shaken when trouble stirs. It was only a matter of time until I put the simple syrup in my veins to good use and embraced my future as a
master mixologist.
I don’t remember what actually sparked my interest in cocktails but one thing led to another and I had a fridge full of soda water and a cocktail shaker from Amazon begging to be used.
I didn’t make anything alcoholic because I was underage and boring but after making a mean virgin blueberry mojito I felt like I was on top of the world.
Despite my excitement to be a home-brewed barkeep, it was surprisingly difficult to make a wide variety of cocktails out of things in my fridge and enthusiasm alone.
The realization that, no, a 19-year-old making cocktails for fun at home didn’t have a justification for buying a bunch of new ingredients ultimately muddled this hobby for me. The time I accidentally used red wine vinegar instead of grenadine was just the nail in the coffin.
What comes next?
With all the interests that come and go, there are a number of hobbies that lay on the horizon. Maybe I’ll finally try axe throwing, maybe I’ll learn to unicycle, maybe I’ll pick up any of the things on this list I gave up on and try again.
More likely than not, whatever hobby of the month calls to me next will become another chapter in the encyclopedia of interests.
Now that I mention it, book-binding does sound kind of interesting.
