It only really took a five-minute conversation coupled with 27 years of gross inactivity to realize I was a man without hobbies.
It happened like this: During a lunch break at work, I sat down at the table nearest to the bathroom, lovingly dubbed "bathroom table" to eat a goliath bowl of steaming noodles from a dirty deli on Broadway. My dear work-friend sat down across from me, where I noticed his callus covered-hand pushing a sandwich into his mouth. I asked him to explain the source of his rough, manly, dad-like hands: "Climbing."
"What did you climb?" I asked, slurping ramen through my tender, puckered lips, expecting an answer pertaining to some bizarre climbing-related activity for business over pleasure.
"A climbing wall in Brooklyn. You should come." I scoffed, as I typically do when presented with risible suggestions.
"Do you go there a lot?" I inquired
"Sure, like three times a week." Moments later, I was asked a question that forever changed the tone of the conversation and allowed me to astral project my soul several feet above my head to examine my life in a way I had never experienced before: "Do you have any hobbies?" Seconds before I was about to perform the scoff to trump all scoffs, I paused. I paused and thought and sat and furrowed my brow, simply unable to produce an answer. I realized then that I did not have any hobbies whatsoever.
"I like to write."
"That's your job."
"I like coffee."
"A drink isn't a hobby."
"I like to walk…"
"You have to walk to get places," he said, slamming his mammoth fist upon bathroom table.
As I sat in my chair, dazed and silent, I felt my fleshy, white body writhe in discomfort and then came the fugue state.
In the past, I would have blamed my lack of ambitions on the weather or chronic benign leukemia, but it was a pleasant night out and the second one is apparently made up. Sorry.
You see, when asking a person to explain their life choices when the explanation itself is clearly detrimental to the person explaining, one acts like a shark on its back. The person goes into a functional coma that lasts only seconds, but feels like an entire U2 album. Then, the person desperately tries to search through the past seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, years of their life trying to cling to any semblance of an answer that can be presented as a counter-argument.
I needed something to reply with—a forgotten affinity for classic cars, a rogue stamp collection, anything—but no such collection existed and classic cars are for assholes.
When all was said and done and the fugue state had passed, I was left exactly how I started: a mouth full of noodles and an answer full of holes.
"I don't have any hobbies. I don't think I have any hobbies at all." I remember the look on his face, neither judgement nor pity, just fucking nothing.
"I go home after work and sit on the computer until I'm tired. Sometimes I'll shave, but that's it. Then, I go to bed."
I can't remember how the conversation ended, but I assume I finished the bowl of noodles. My hazy world was flipped upside-down, like a snow globe with a relevant allegory written on the inside. My callused friend is a man who has dedicated a vast chunk of his time to the activities he likes to pursue. He bikes, climbs, reads, runs and probably makes really delicious food. I, a lowly noodle-eating cretin, just sit and stare. Sit and stare. Sit. Stare.
That night, I went home to peruse the Internet while maintaining a sitting position and thought over every kite I never flew as a child, every sweater I never knit as a man, every portrait I never drew and transitioned from fugue into somber. The shark had flipped back on its stomach, but with a nasty case of sadness. What was wrong with me? Why did I never grow to like anything? Was it my generation? Is it me as a human being?
I couldn't quite figure out why I didn't feel strongly about, really, any activity outside of writing and drinking coffee and walking and couldn't manage to settle on an opinion.
In the past, I would have blamed my lack of ambitions on the weather or chronic benign leukemia, but it was a pleasant night out and the second one is apparently made up. Sorry.
I am fundamentally content with not having fun. Even as I stood in the shower—the place where decisions are made—I couldn't pinpoint even one thing I went out of my way to do for fun. I don't build things. I don't produce art. And, like, I only draw so I can post things on Instagram. I'm a hobby-less bum, and I don't think there's anything I can ever do to change that.
There's something in here about self-appreciating, right? People don't need hobbies because they have friends and literature, right? Am I going out on a limb by saying that I'm a better person than most because I sit on my ass all night on my laptop, exploring past unknown regions of the web and clicking between sub-Reddits and lifestyle blogs?
Then it clicked. The Internet. The Internet is my hobby. Okay, I just figured it out right now as I was writing this, but my hobby is the Internet. Jesus, I was getting freaked out for a second. All is well. You can all climb your rocks until your hands are bloody stumps. My hobby is going on the Internet and looking up stuff. Also, shaving. Those are my two hobbies: the Internet and shaving. That was close.
Jeremy Glass was conceived in a seedy dance hall in Hartford, CT during the summer of 1986 and was born nine months later in the bathroom of that very same club. You can read about all the weird things he puts up his nose on Supercompressor and follow him on Twitter here if you want to be DM'd nude pictures of Burt Reynolds.
