The Unfaithful Hobbyist

My number one hobby is writing. The rest are really all just to inform my writing, if I’m frank.

I have commitment issues when it comes to other hobbies. I pick up a bunch of hobbies long enough to learn about them but never master them, then move on to the next thing. I love to learn about everything, but I’m never dedicated enough to become an expert in anything.

This does help me as a writer, believe it or not. I can include these hobbies in my story with just enough detail to be convincing, but be able to get away with not being proficient. Usually I use writing as an excuse to learn different hobbies more than I use my hobbies to inform my writing.

I’ll seek out any new experience or learn anything for my writing. I’ll become obsessed by something: knife throwing, lock picking, the Latin language, food, wine, urban spelunking, Greek and Roman mythology, tai chi – do it until I get bored, write about it, and then move on to the next experience.

It can be a distraction to my writing sometimes, when I get obsessed with learning about a subject. I spent a day reading about the history of local cemeteries to inform a vampire novel I wrote that will probably never see the light of day (excuse the pun) as well as a story about a girl who can communicate with the dead so she likes to hang out in cemeteries.

The more I think about it, the more I think I need to include learning as one of my major hobbies. I’m as compelled to learn new things as I am to write. I take classes whenever I can, I devour books for their information, and I ask a lot of questions when I find people who do something I know nothing about. I also do a ton of internet research just for fun.

Learning and writing are two hobbies that definitely complement each other. What I write has more flavor because I’m able to flesh things out using my experiences and the things I’ve learned, and writing gives me a good excuse to tackle the next hobby.

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