Hobbies and Adulthood
Why they are so hard to make time for & what I've discovered so far
Hi, friend! 🌸 Before getting into this week’s post, I wanted to welcome everyone that’s subscribed to Spring Cleaning over the last few weeks. I’m beyond happy that you’re here!
Spring Cleaning is a free newsletter delivered straight to your inbox (or the Substack app) where I share personal essays and reflections on growing up, making meaning, and discovering who I am as an adult. I hope it brings joy and mini moments of reflection to your day. If my writing resonates with you, please share it with your loved ones! 💌
How do we find time for hobbies in adulthood? It’s something I’ve struggled with since entering the post-college world. Between working, trying to exercise, FaceTiming my parents, calling my long-distance friends, hanging out with my in-person friends, resting, exploring my city, cooking, cleaning and getting my daily 10k steps (you get the picture)… there isn’t much time for anything else.
A few years ago I realized that I hadn’t had a true hobby since my childhood. I sang in a children’s choir for a decade and when I started at 7 years old, it was purely for the love of singing. But as the years passed, choir became less joyful and morphed into something that I simply tolerated. I knew it would look good on my college applications. The only hobby that’s been a throughline in my life is reading; I’ve been obsessed with books for as long as I can remember, and there are few things I love more than getting lost in an amazing story.
In my early twenties, I started an aspirational list on my Notes app of things I wanted to try, from surfing to knitting. This sat untouched on my phone except for the few times a year when I’d revisit, add more things, and feel bad about myself because I wasn’t taking action on the many skills and hobbies I wanted to explore.
When I moved back to New York from Washington DC in summer 2022, I decided to finally do something about my growing list. I found a pottery studio in my neighborhood and signed up for two months of classes. I was so excited - pottery was the first thing I added to my list over five years earlier. My maternal grandfather (aka my Tata, Joe Trules) was a recreational ceramicist and I have the fondest memories of sitting with him at the wheel and watching him make magic with clay and water. He was my last living grandparent and passed away when I was 14; I fantasized about how it would make me feel more connected to the man I never got to know as the adult version of myself.
It turns out that pottery skills are not passed down genetically. It was so much harder than I expected. PotteryTok makes the process look simple, quick, and relaxing; for me this was not the case. It took hours to learn how to throw a bowl and most of my pieces collapsed during the home stretch. Being a beginner (and a bad beginner at that) is really challenging, especially if you’re used to succeeding at most of the things that you’ve tried. Showing up to class after work felt nearly impossible. I left my first few classes demoralized and contemplated quitting, even though I paid several hundred dollars up front for the course.
After a few more weeks of fighting my impulse to give up on this new project, I began to notice a change… I was noticing improvement and even progress (!!!). I got the hang of throwing bowls and I even made some decent ones. I began to appreciate the three hour chunk of class where I couldn’t be on my phone because my hands were covered in clay. I even started enjoying the intricate process of wheel throwing ceramics and felt so proud of my small, imperfect creations.
After a month of classes, something shifted inside of me and I began to embrace the experience of being a total beginner. Acknowledging my novice status gave me all the permission in the world to be terrible and I knew I could only get better from there. Watching my slow development, from collapsed bowls to throwing my first mug and pulling a handle, made me feel like I could accomplish anything. While this was all happening in the microcosm of the studio, I didn’t realize the changes happening on a larger scale until much later. My experience trying pottery was a practice of failing (although at a very small scale and luckily, temporarily). It was the first time in over a decade that I let myself try something just to try it, not knowing if I’d be good or bad (though of course I secretly hoped that I would be good). For such a large chunk of my life, I was paralyzed by the thought of making mistakes - both at work (discussed in this post from a few weeks ago) and in life - that I only chose to explore things that I thought I would succeed in.
My pottery practice loosened the grip of my near-crippling perfectionism. While I figured out how to throw, trim, fire, and glaze pieces of pottery, I also learned to be more comfortable making mistakes and failing. Through shaping clay, I unexpectedly built a more resilient, accepting, and creative version of myself. While it was initially challenging, trying something new became less intimidating over time. When my pottery class ended, I found myself eager to try more things that had been buried in the depths of my Notes app like painting, writing, and (to my mom’s delight) pickleball. I’ve been slowly trying new hobbies over the last two years and feel more alive and excited about life than ever.
Don’t be afraid to be terrible.
Do you have hobbies you love or fantasies of things that you would love to create but haven’t yet tried? Have you given yourself the permission to discover parts of yourself that you’re curious about but maybe haven’t explored because you’re not sure you’ll be good? How have your hobbies/leisure activities impacted other parts of your life like your relationships, career, creativity, and personal growth?
I’m super curious about this! Let me know your thoughts in the comments (scroll to the bottom of this post or click the purple button below⬇️).
Things sparking joy
🎭Seeing a play - I saw Hell’s Kitchen this week and I loved it. It’s a new musical loosely based on Alicia Keys’ youth in NYC and she wrote all the music. It was beautiful and I cried. Highly recommend it if you live in New York, or if it comes to a city near you! I’d love to see more shows, but also hate Times Square. Sigh.
🍷German Wine - I’m slightly obsessed with natural wine. I went to an event in my neighborhood with a German winemaker from the Pfalz region and tasted 6 different organic and biodynamic wines (my head still hurts). I loved them all! If you have a natural wine shop where you live, keep your eyes peeled for Weingut Scheuermann and try the pinot noir and vin de soda.
🚗Cool license plates - I’ve always loved interesting license plates. Seeing them in the wild makes me very happy! How cute is this one from New Jersey? I’ve never seen it before. Tomato season is quickly approaching.
🌸This specific color of pink - Nature is crazy. Spring is springing!
What I’m loving this week
Reading my same books from last week (Daring Greatly by Brené Brown and the 6th book in the Throne of Glass series) but planning to read Trust next. Reading this NYT article on ‘Green Islam’ and this article on ‘Eldest Daughter Syndrome’ - feeling very seen. Anyone who says birth order is not real has never spent time with me and my sister, Marcela.
Listening to The Tortured Poets Department today (!). This week I listened to “Whole30: Melissa Urban” on How I Built This; I loved learning how this brand was built. Who has done Whole30? This was (and maybe still is) such a popular thing pre-COVID and I was very curious to try it back in the day. The only reason I didn’t is because my 25 year old self thought it would be impossible to give up alcohol for a month 😂.
I also subscribed to Audible premium (again) and I’m looking for audiobook recommendations - please let me know if you have any good ones in the comments below 📚
If you enjoyed reading Spring Cleaning this week, here are a few ways you can support me and my work:
❤️️Restack this post!
❤️️Send the link to your friends, or talk about it in person!
❤️️Leave a comment or like on this post (below)!
Thank you so much for reading! I deeply appreciate each and every one of you. Spring is here! 🌸 x
I agree with everything your mother says! I'm so impressed you took up pottery with your busy work schedule, and that you're getting so much enjoyment out of it. The article resonated with me because I took up watercolor about 10 years ago. At first it was sheer delight, because I was such a novice, and I was happy just painting a color wheel. Then I started wanting to get good, and it lost some of its joy. My goal is to not worry about it being good, and to just play. When I was teaching creative writing, I used to tell students "It's OK to suck," (credit for that line goes to an actor in the artist-in-residence program I was in), in hopes of freeing them up. Now I keep reminding myself that every day! ("It's just paper," my watercolor teacher reminds me.) Anyway, I'm looking forward to more posts! (And I love the photo of you with your grandfather -- what joy, in your faces!)
I love the encouragement to try new hobbies! Last month, Nabil and I did a salsa class and it was just like so fun to do something new. I don't know why as adults we forget that hobbies and "extracurriculars" exist? I feel like Covid helped remind people in some ways (like everyone started baking). Overall, I really enjoyed reading about your experience and thought it was really encouraging and a great reminder to get out there and try new things that make us happy without being afraid to fail.