I love having hobbies. After a break-up a few months ago, I said through tears on the phone to my mom, Why is this happening to me? I don’t need any more hobbies! But sure enough, I leaned into my crafts and sports, and picked up a new pastime or two as well. My mid-life crisis is going to be insane.
The great thing about hobbies is they really aren’t that deep, but at the same time, they so totally are. At the moment, I’m writing a dissertation on the social world of outdoor swimmers, a hobby I too love very much. My research has led me to reflect on how the activities I do and my commitment to having hobbies more generally have shaped who I am and the way I live in the world. Writing about a London ten-pin bowling league, sociologist Emma Jackson describes taking part in group hobbies as a process of ‘belonging and becoming.’ I’m thinking along similar terms here.
Running is my longest loved hobby. It’s been part of my everyday life for nearly half the time I’ve been alive. I’m excited to be running the Hackney Half Marathon in May whilst raising money for St Jospeh’s Hospice. Equitable access to compassionate end-of-life care is something I care about very much, and I’m proud to be helping St Joseph’s take good care of people in East London. If you’d like to donate, you can do so here. Thank you so so much :)
I was worried my hands would be too small to play the banjo. The size of my hands has gotten in the way of my musical ambitions before. When I played the piano, I couldn’t reach an octave. In fifth grade, my school’s music department had an ‘instrument petting zoo’ to help us pick what we wanted to play in the band. My hands couldn’t wrap around the neck of a saxophone without hitting the valves on the sides, and the music teacher told me my pinkies were too short for the clarinet. I settled on the flute, which I played for several years. But I could never upgrade to an open-holed instrument because I just didn’t have the reach. I quit band before my last year of high school, and I haven’t made music since.
My renewed interest in instruments started at a gig by the English and Welsh folk group The Trials of Cato. I watched the members of the group effortlessly swap stringed instruments, a banjo for one tune, a mandolin for the next. How do they do that? I thought, quickly followed by, I want to be able to do that, too. I’ve felt this way at concerts before, completely taken by the talent and joy of the musicians on the stage. The feeling usually fades by the next morning, but that night, I happened to be in a period of relative emotional upheaval. Leaving the venue, I told my friends I was going to learn to play an instrument, and I knew I meant it. Take that as either a warning or an endorsement of the power of folk.
I started doing my research. I listened to a lot of music and watched videos to try and match the sounds to instruments that made them. I decided I liked the banjo best, played the old-fashioned way with a mix of strumming and plucking. I googled how to play the banjo and clicked through blog posts and Youtube videos of people playing in their bedrooms and yards. I read old threads on folk music forums, where banjo enthusiasts wrote long, encouraging answers in response to the questions of strangers. These anonymous users promised that anyone could learn the banjo, even complete beginners with small hands. Remembering the humiliation of the instrument petting zoo, I was hesitant to believe them. But a friend who plays the violin assured me that her small hands never got in the way. To show why, she pressed her palms together and stretched her fingers as far apart as possible. Her left hand spread so much farther than her right that it was hard to believe the bones were all the same size. With practice, she said, you’ll be able to reach as far as you need to.
So, I found a banjo for sale on Facebook marketplace. I took the bus to Fulbourn and back to bring it home. I picked an online course, sat cross legged on my bed and started at the very beginning. For the first few days, I did nothing but strum an open G-chord. I got used to holding my fingers as if I was shaking an invisible hand and brushing them against the strings. Finally, it was time to learn my first few chords. This is when I ran into trouble. The D7 chord was alright, just two fingers pressed down on adjacent strings. But the C chord, with three fingers spread across the fretboard, felt impossible. Just getting my fingers in place took a ridiculous amount of concentration and flexibility, let alone trying to switch chords and strum at the same time. My fingers felt clumsy, and my hand hurt from making such an unnatural reach. The skin on my fingertips grew tender from holding down the metal strings. I couldn’t do the fingerings without accidentally touching other strings, so when I tried to strum, the sound that came out was a dull thunk. I felt lied to. Surely I lacked something real banjo players had—innate musical talent or agile fingers or normal sized hands.
I tried to remember that I’d felt this way before. When I taught myself how to knit, I almost cried out of frustration. I slowed the instructional videos down to half-speed, but still struggled to mimic the movement with my own hands. I finally got the hang of the basic motion, but it still required total concentration. Completing my first bit of ribbing, I had to chant knit, purl out loud to keep the stitches straight. When I started cycling in London, I had to practise riding my 70s road bike in the park before work because I felt so unsteady. After my maiden voyage, I was saddle-sore until the next day. When I learned how to swim front crawl, I could barely do one 50m length without needing a break. I clung to the edge of the pool, coughing up chlorinated water and thinking to myself, How on earth do people do this? Being underwater for minutes at a time felt so foreign and frightening, I thought I might become the first person to drown at the Yale pool.
I didn’t drown, not in the gym practice pool, or in the reservoir where I swam my first open-water mile, or in the lido when the water temperature hovered a few degrees above freezing. Swimming still feels thrilling, but because I can challenge myself to go farther and faster, not because every swim feels like a near-death experience. These days, I cycle frequently and joyfully. I can knit almost as effortlessly as I can walk. I can make not just ribbing, but fair isle patterns and cables and seamless jumpers. I look back at the first project I finished—a wonky sweater vest made up of mostly twisted stitches—and find it cute that I was once so proud of it. I can only hope in the future I’ll feel something like that towards what I’m making now.
Back when I expected adulthood to be dull, I might’ve said that hobbies are important because it’s rare to have the chance to learn something new. I know better now—hobbies are important because life makes you learn new things all the time. You have to learn how to live with change, how to live with loss. Life takes you to strange and hard places, and you must learn to call them home. Sure, picking up a new hobby is a bit more straightforward than figuring out life, but it’s not too different. Time and time again, my hobbies have shown me that things often feel impossible until one day they aren’t. And more often than not, I find I can reach as far as I need to.
I’ve stuck with my banjo practice. Eventually, I got the hang of the C-chord. There wasn’t a big moment when it clicked. My hands just got used to it, and at some point, I started making something that sounded a bit more like music. I hope one day playing the banjo will be a creative and social practice. For now, it’s mostly technical. I know a few songs with banjo-y names like “Cripple Creek” and “Shady Grove.” I play them over and over using the metronome app on my phone, a few beats per minute faster every time. Sometimes, I swear I can feel the new neural pathways forming in my brain, the tendons in my hands growing stronger and more flexible. I notice how callouses have formed over my broken fingertip skin. I’m glad to realise I’m different than before.
thanks for reading friends! would love to hear about any hobbies you’re enjoying these days. as always, sending lots of love your way xx Liz
Highlights of the month: best thing I read — Turtle Diary, by Russell Hoban; best thing I listened to — The New Faith, by Jake Blount (Blount is brilliant musician/musicologist who I came across when learning about the West African and African American roots of banjo music; this album tells an afrofuturist story about climate crisis); best thing I watched — Nye on National Theatre Live (shoutout Dan); best thing I made — a cherry pattern sweater vest in progress; best thing I ate — post-Ben Nevis tennis-racquet-sized naan in Glasgow (shoutout Alex and Madeline)