Nat Locke: Where am I to find the time to have an actual hobby between work, bills and serving my elderly dog?

Look, small talk can be excruciating at the best of times, but the other day, someone had the audacity to ask me whether I had any hobbies. I beg your pardon. How dare you.

The reason it’s a confronting question for me is that I can’t think of one single thing I do that could be reasonably interpreted as a hobby. Where did I go wrong?

When I was a kid, I had hobbies galore. I was constantly tinkering with something, whether it was teaching myself to crochet from a book, or sewing on my grandmother’s old treadle sewing machine, or riding my horse whilst pretending I was riding a champion showjumper (I had a wild imagination).

But that was before I had actual life to worry about. Those days were carefree and devoid of encumbrance. No bills to pay, no job to go to. I was blissfully unaware of when the Reserve Bank met, or what an interest rate was. Take me back.

Now, in between getting up at 4am, holding down a job and being a full-time servant to my elderly dog, where am I supposed to find the time to have an actual hobby? A pastime? A recreational pursuit, indeed. Tell ‘er she’s dreamin’.

I went looking online for hobby ideas and stumbled onto an article that was helpfully titled Seven Busy Women Share The Hobbies They’ve Actually Stuck With. Exactly what I was looking for. Right. Let’s go.

Several of the suggestions were artsy classes like painting, jewellery making and flower arranging, and already I’m out, for two reasons. Firstly, I’ve tested my artistic abilities previously and found them sadly lacking. And two, who can commit to an actual class on a regular basis? Not this little black duck. Next!

Oh dear God. The next suggestion is running. And look, I exercise. I turned my garage into a gym, for goodness’ sake. Sometimes I’ll even go for a bit of a trot on my treadmill. But I just can’t consider that a hobby. It’s more of a necessary evil. It’s not something I look forward to doing. It’s something I suffer through because I know it’s good for me, like eating quinoa and getting a pap smear.

Then there was blogging. Oh, you mean writing something on a regular basis for others to read? Ummm . . . while I can confidently say that’s something I’m already doing (on account of you reading it now) that is also not a hobby for me. It’s more of a deadline.

Hilariously, one of these seven women reckons going to book club counts as a hobby. Part of me respects her low standards. And maybe her book club is different to mine, but I’ve never considered eating fancy cheese and drinking gin to be a legitimate recreational pursuit.

The final suggestion was learning a language, which actually holds some merit in my world. I love languages, but I fell down a Duolingo rabbit hole during COVID, and — believe it or not — FINISHED the Portuguese course. Yes. I made it all the way through. Can I speak Portuguese? No. In fact when I went to Portugal a few months ago, I found that all those hours spent keeping that little Duolingo owl happy had been completely wasted. I was whatever the opposite of fluent is. So I’m slightly disillusioned with studying a language.

Instead, I’ve decided to reclassify things that I already do as hobbies. Like tweezing the same three hairs from my chin with an alarming regularity. By the time I get to the third one, the first one has grown back again so it’s like a very high stakes game of Whac-A-Mole. Yep, that’s a hobby.

I’m also very adept at writing lists of the things that I’m aiming to do on the weekend. On any weekend. Do I achieve any of these things? No, not really. But writing the list is an achievement in itself. If I invest in some fancy paper and a fountain pen, I’ll practically be an artisan. Clearly, a hobby.

I also spend a decent amount of time opening the door for the cat to go out and then opening it almost immediately to let her back in again. Until one of us dies, presumably. Chalk it up. That’s a hobby for life.

And how about watching videos of dogs on the internet, often while my own dog is staring at me curious as to when we might be heading to the park? No wonder I haven’t got time for flower arranging classes. This is some of my finest work.

So, I’m now prepared for the next time someone asks me this awful question. I’m just not sure they’ll stick around after they hear the answer.