Hello! A quick note to say that this is my last newsletter of the year. I’ll be spending the remainder of the month planning and reporting stories for 2023, and will return to your inboxes on January 4.
Thank you so much for reading Oh, Balloon. Have a happy and healthy holiday season!
Around this time last year, I was working on a marketing campaign for a company that caters to creative types (designers, photographers, filmmakers, etc.). My job was to collect brief summaries of how employees at the company spent their free time. I heard from a jazz guitarist, a Cajun cook, a surfer, a cosplayer, an oil painter—people with rich and intricate hobbies.
The project got me thinking about my own leisure activities. I read. I write. I listen to podcasts. But it’s not like I spend Saturday afternoons throwing clay on a pottery wheel. I didn’t even start knitting or baking at the height of the pandemic. I needed something more specific, more tangible to call a hobby.
“I’m going to start painting in the New Year,” I told my boyfriend, Lane, one night in December.
That never happened.
Hobbies are good for us. Research shows that people who engage in leisure activities are less likely to suffer from stress and depression (both of which are common among caregivers); according to one study, hobbyists are also less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease. Despite knowing these things, I haven’t picked up a new hobby since my early thirties, when I decided to take drum lessons—then quit two years later because I “plateaued” and lacked the “natural talent” to master the instrument (my words).
Most of my free time for the past four years has been spent caring for a parent with dementia or wrestling with the anxiety that comes with it, so I cut myself some slack for not, you know, planting a garden. But as 2022 comes to an end and I reflect on what I want for 2023, I keep coming back to my failed resolution to paint. What does it say about the way I live my life?
Much has been written about why New Year’s resolutions are bad—they position us to fail, they bum us out. But beyond the headlines, what experts are really telling us is that vague, unrealistic resolutions are bad. There’s nothing inherently wrong with setting specific, achievable goals, whether you do so on January 1 or April 22.
Practically speaking, perhaps my vow to start painting wasn’t specific enough. (What kind of painting would I do? How often?) Or maybe I didn’t break the goal down into suitably small steps (1. Watch a YouTube tutorial; 2. Buy supplies, etc.). But I suspect a mindset problem was at play, too: Like many people in our productivity-obsessed culture, I rarely do something just for the sake of doing it. I don’t prioritize fun.
“True fun is good for our health,” Catherine Price writes in her book The Power of Fun: How to Feel Alive Again. “It gets us up from our desks, out of our heads, and into the world. Having more True Fun lowers our stress levels, and over time, that will likely lower our risks for all the health problems that are triggered or exacerbated by stress, such as heart attacks, strokes, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and dementia.”
Price defines “True Fun” as the convergence of three states: playfulness, connection, and flow. Playfulness refers to “a spirit of lightheartedness and freedom.” It’s a willingness to do something without “caring too much about the outcome” and with “no sense of obligation.” Connection is just what it sounds like—a shared experience with someone or something (like, say, nature). And flow is a “term used in psychology to describe when you are fully engrossed and engaged in your present experience to the point that you lose track of time.” When you’re in flow, you're free from self-consciousness and judgment.
Not all hobbies qualify as True Fun. Some tap into only two of the three states at once (painting might inspire playful flow but not connection, for instance). That’s okay. But, going by Price’s definition, I’m not sure my usual leisure activities check any of her True Fun boxes. I love reading, but I’m often doing so to learn something. I love writing, but it’s how I make money (and even when I write for free, as with this newsletter, I care about the outcome); and I love listening to podcasts, but I usually do so passively, while folding laundry or driving. What do I do purely for fun?
In reading about the importance of hobbies, I came across a 2018 New York Times Opinion piece called “In Praise of Mediocrity.” In it, writer Tim Wu argues that it’s not a lack of time that keeps us from pursuing leisure activities so much as a fear of being bad at them.
“If you’re a jogger, it is no longer enough to cruise around the block; you’re training for the next marathon,” he writes. “If you’re a painter, you are no longer passing a pleasant afternoon, just you, your watercolors and your water lilies; you are trying to land a gallery show or at least garner a respectable social media following.”
“...Lost here is the gentle pursuit of a modest competence. The doing of something just because you enjoy it, not because you are good at it.”
As someone who quit playing drums because I wasn’t getting good enough fast enough, I was struck by Wu’s point. Perhaps it isn’t just productivity-culture that keeps me from doing things “for the sake of doing them,” but also my own perfectionism. I have a way of making hobbies feel stressful, like homework or chores. What if, in 2023, I made a real effort to cut that out?
I’m tempted to once again declare—right here and now—that I’m going to start painting in the New Year. But what’s the point? Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. More important is that I learn to have fun. If I pick up a new hobby or two along the way, then great—I’ll go with the flow.
Oh, Patti! I had a real struggle these past few years with doing hobbies in a vacuum, for lack of a better phrase. I draw because I must, I write because I must, but if I wasn’t doing it for profit or The Likes on social (where the algorithm was sinking me), what was it for? I’ve been working this year on creating and not showing. Making my journals a little more expressive because it makes me happy to see little bits of scrap paper thoughts surrounding by my loopy handwriting; Trying and sometimes failing at new art styles.
I guess what I’m saying is that even those of us with identifiable “hobbies” struggle here too. Do it for yourself! But if you ever feel like trying to doodle over a cup of coffee with some quiet company, you know where to find me.
Thanks for this, Kate. I’m glad you’ve found a way to create this year that feels better to you! I love your idea to doodle in your journal--I’m gonna try it! I also love the idea of having a scrapbook-type journal, so maybe I’ll give that a go too!
I think a willingness to try new things and fail, like you said, is essential to expressing our creativity.
I’ll be taking you up on that coffee!