Hobby Hoarse

 

In a job interview recently, I was asked about my hobbies, and it honestly threw me. I haven’t had that particular interview question in years. I was thoroughly prepared to discuss budget and policy and difficult decisions and every number of work related metrics. My previous two interviews were multi-day affairs, the most recent one lasting seven hours!!!

I smiled, because it was such a welcome way to start the conversation. But I also had no idea how to respond because it was the kind of thing human beings talk about.

So instead, I just started rambling incoherently about all the things I like to do that just started randomly popping up in my head. Weirdly enough, I started with binge watching The West Wing (IS THAT EVEN A HOBBY?!?).

“Wow. You have a lot of hobbies.”

UGH

(It’s actually worse, because after the interview, I kept thinking of all the hobbies I didn’t mention. HOW DID YOU FORGET GARDENING? AND BIRD WATCHING? AND RAISING A PUPPY? IS THAT EVEN A HOBBY?!? No, I reassured myself. Raising a puppy is serious business).

A family member is suffering from relatively early dementia, so from time to time I find myself in the rabbit hole of online medical effluvia (stinking opinions), but I am assuming that some things I read are true. I read that relatively few brain cells are regenerative, and that our brain reroutes rather than repairs broken roads (MUCH LIKE THE COUNTY). I also read that new neurons will often die if not actively used.

A part of me wonders if my unwillingness to reduce my hobbies is a subconscious awareness that I will lose my travel fluency in these beloved distractions. And it made me sad for the hobbies I started but let lapse into neuronal death. Every now and then I reorganize my garage and come across a rock tumbler or a yo-yo or my confirmation bible (IS THAT EVEN A HOBBY?!?) and make the sign of the cross. Even sadder is that there was a time when my first answer to that question would have been, ‘Writing.’

In hindsight, I probably should have said, ‘MY CAREER IS MY ONLY HOBBY’ in order to underscore my vocational dedication but is that even a hobby?

Anyway, I start my new job in a couple of weeks.