By Walter Steinwald. (Originally written Jan, 2019.)

     I wrote this because I was curious to know about hobbies in general, but failed to find anything helpful in defining the term or discussing the affects.  
      I marvel at my kids pretty often and in one of these reveries I saw their avid hobby practice. They each own multiple hobbies and practice them to ever increasing depths. As they mature, the tools and materials needed in practicing these hobbies increase in complexity and rarity. This got me thinking of the state of hobbies and the nature of hobbies overall. Loose parts are difficult, comprehensive boxed single use goodies are on the rise and hobby sections in major stores are reduced or removed altogether. Most of our hobby materials must be got from online. Seeing the benefits my two receive from hobbies, I wanted to just map out what a hobby is before speculating on the demise or not. Some of the edges I found while running my mind over it were pretty enriching and a little startling.
 
A Definition of Hobby
 
     What are hobbies? Are hobbies good for kids? What about electronic media as a hobby? These were some of the loose questions I had and here are some of the loose answers I found.
     Firstly, I need to separate hobby from leisure and play. The end aim of play is fun, just fun. When play is not fun, we stop.  Leisure is not fun necessarily, but is similar to play inasmuch as it has no specific aim or preparation. Play is a rope swing, pickup ball game or wrestling on the living room floor. Leisure is a front porch book reading, a cocktail party or fishing along a stream. Hobbies are unlike either play or leisure in the following number of ways.

     A hobby would need to be done without compensation at its birth and early stages. Only after a time of maturation, one has the ability and freedom to meld it with their profession or turn it into their profession. A hobby does not require belonging to a known niche, because creating plays such a large part. Individual interest must be the core of one’s hobby because it is the bedrock of the enterprise. One can respond to an invite, but afterward he/she must take the interest up on his/her own accord. It cannot be pressed on one, like for instance, sports, which can be practiced and honed without personal interest or love. A fourth aspect is the ability to acquire knowledge about the hobby, so that one can continue a deeper understanding and a perfected aptitude. To actively participate in the hobby, means to practice it whatever it might be. We don’t need to devote in entire room of our home to it, but one can’t be a birdwatcher or hiker when we have done it twice in our many years of life. There must be some constancy.
     A hobby is very selfish, in the sense that it cannot be practiced for any other reason than itself. The reward is caught up in the practicing of it. Doing what you like without any reward save the joy is a tool of life not easily gained but wonderfully liberating. (I think an aside here is important. I can hear people saying, “Everyone knows how to do that.” But, I would say most everyone I know does what he/she does for ulterior reasons. We do things from guilt. We do things to keep up with the neighbors. We do things from peer pressure and how many things are done from fad, commercially fabricated? Most us haven’t learned to enjoy that hobby for no other reason than itself.) And this is an invitation to maturity hobbies hold for us. Built into the notion of doing something for its own sake is the reality that a thing is worth it, that it has value, that it is so great we will spend our time working on it for no other reason that to bring it to completion. I think the pride we gain from creating this thing is mixed with the humility of acknowledging we are as much of it as it is of us.
     Because the nature of hobby is creative, the field to choose a single event is limitless. This is where a person looks on to the world and draws a line connecting similarities no other has noticed. Our creating is the closes to ex Nihil we have, because of the deep attachment to our personhood, to who we are. Our creations die with us. There are things only I can create and you, no other. That doesn’t mean everything we create is worth creating, but it does show that each of us has a little godliness in us. When we choose a hobby, we look into ourselves or as often is the case we feel as if it has chosen us. And this is from that deep connection to our fabric as a self. There are museums throughout the country exhibiting surprising collections of originality and breadth. Charles Kuralt in his “On the Road” series unearthed some of the most novel and fun hobbyist ever, from a collector of twine to a man fixing bicycles for the neighborhood kids. Each one of them simple and decent folk, except their hobbies made them so much more, un-measurable in a way.
     Also, related to this creative core is the intimacy a hobby cultivates related to that organic founding and constant suscitation for moving it forward. It is some deep piece of the person. It is a visible ribbon of him that is drawn out for us bystanders to observe and sometimes marvel at. This confidentiality is drawn from his/her vision of the greatness and grandness of the thing. The hobbyist values secret or recondite aspects and to bare these things blatantly is nearly shameful. It is very like the lover that does not go about blathering of his/her espoused to any stranger. Sometimes it is such a rich intimacy, that years after knowing our friend we find out, accidentally of his/her hobby.
     A hobby, because it is real thing no matter how extraordinary, requires knowledge to keep it alive for us. Our interest or love for it necessitates us to learn, sometimes far outside of the sphere of interest at times, but we always have out eye on the hobby. A mature knowledge and therefore deep study is necessary. There is thirst for knowing more, so we can take our hobby to the next level. There is, I think, a vision of the thing perfected and that is what the hobbyist wants. I think this is for the respect of the hobby he has learned to love
     One practices that which he/she loves. I think practice comes fairly easily for the hobbyist, due to the other four requirements: though, I think it odd it is the last essential part we are talking about. He/she chose it, finds it terribly interesting and learns subtle and little known facts about it. This active relationship with the hobby is not a task or any exterior obligation; rather, it is closer to the peace and quiet one feels with their loved one. Here we have no pressure to talk or entertain because we are at rest in this activity or with this person. We are not here for any reason, only to be here. We can see how the creative force really controls our hobby over all.
 
A Sort of Summation
 
     The role hobby takes in maturing and forming depth and subtlety was for me surprising, almost awe-inspiring. The great amount of space a hobby can take up in a person’s life was something else I never imagined. The idea that we could see our friends and associates through the lens of their hobbies is a bit Dali-like but practical too. I mean what if there was an App that only showed our hobbies, our authentic interests. What would we envision the person behind hobbies such as embroidery, kite building and creating scale-model city-scapes to be like or look like? Or cynically, would they all say watching TV, browsing the Internet and gaming? Let’s hope not, anyway. There are few more aspects related to hobbies that I think must be noted, and so I put them down just to be comprehensive.
 
What about Sports, Computer Code and DIY Kits?
 
     Many people will list sports for a hobby, but I think we must say that instead of growing and become more proficient and knowledgeable with age we would practice less and from physical detriment become less active. It falls more along the leisure time activity. One can certainly be a sports enthusiast and collector of stats and such, but this is differing from our understanding of hobby, I think. There is little creative means here, more of a records keeper.
     Another competitor for hobbies is the craft movement. Some hobbyists certainly have become craftsmen, but in its most basic meaning “craft” is much closer to apprentice or learning a trade, presumably for future pay. Also, the subject of many traditional crafts can be a hobby, basket weaving, stained glass and such.
     Then there is what goes under the guise of “popular crafts”; renovating your factory made furniture with sponge paints or “antiquing” ones picture frames. Popular crafts are superficial, in the sense they do not require constancy, foundational knowledge, one cannot increase in aptitude and it asks for little creative movement.  Related to and embodying the listed characteristics of popular crafts are the DIY boxed crafts sets any and all craft store sell.
     We need to see how much the DIY boxed kit is stealing from us. Firstly, we are given choices, a limited number, for our content. Secondly, the materials that we would use are given to us. Thirdly, there are instructions. We can hardly compare these to the knowledge foundations we talked of for a hobby. Fourthly, there are ample illustrations on the box and inserts for us to (copy?) follow. Fifth, there is no gradation harder for increasing our aptitude. And lastly, how can it become a hobby if there’s only one set of its kind? Also, the things that are made from these sets are often nondescript and useless trinkets. How can these benefit one’s confidence? Comprehensive DIY projects offend the Montessori injunction of not doing for the child what they can do on their own. They are like “helicopter parents” in a box. There is nothing else your child needs and very little they actually do. So, I don’t think the DIY movement is nurturing to or a sign of vitality in the hobby movement.
     Then there is learning computer code and building apps and games and such, which meets all the criteria we have made for it to be called a hobby. My skepticism for computer based hobbies lies not in their content, but rather in their supreme popularity.  It is hard to believe there is abundant organic interest for computer-based hobbies to the detriment of all other type hobbies. I propose rather that our kids are being pushed into a fad. I have heard of schools offering classes on computer code, I have never heard of schools offering classes on other hobbies. If all things are equal shouldn’t there be classes on scale-model building or stamp collecting? I think our culture is tech heavy-handed here. But maybe it could be said that code will be used as a job skill, but that would put its hobby alias in a slippery slide.
     Gaming either electronic or otherwise is a leisure activity just as watching TV or surfing the Internet. These don’t require skill, constancy, deep interest and offer little to no creative fire. I am aware there are “professional gamers”, but doing a leisure activity often and well does not make it a hobby, just as doing a hobby in your leisure time does not make it a leisure activity. 
 
Are Hobbies Good or Bad?
 
     And after what has been described, should parents encourage their children to take up a hobby? How can we go about it?
     I don’t really know how my children picked up their hobbies. They each have a variety of them though; from knitting and sewing to stop-animation film making and Revolutionary War reenacting. We have always had a wide variety of books about random things and ideas about the house and friends that study in Antarctica and friends that invented pizza machines. These must have had influence, I think. Also, we have moved around the country, visiting diverse ways of living and working together. I am sure taken together these were helpful and even necessary but without the parental support and even reminders and a little nudging, nothing would leave the ground. The parent; the catchall.
     If the parents have hobbies, even though they participate in them seldom, children will benefit. It is easy to draw kids into something we find exciting. It is a sort of test for the parents (as so many things seem to be) to find the interesting and exciting reasons why we like and pursue a thing. All hobbies have attributes that are inspiring or they wouldn’t be practiced. Also, on the opposite pole, sometimes we are so entranced with our hobby that an outside view and uncritical questioning helps regulate and unwrap it. A child’s vision of say photography might help us realize all our pictures look basically the same or our watercolors need some spirit, but whatever it is our child being involved is good. As it is so often, when we think we are helping someone else it is ourselves being served.
     And then there is this, which does fit with the hobby conversation, because so many parents fear and to such a degree restrict access to anything that might be harmful. Do we want our children of, eleven, nine, even eight-years old to use power tools, nails, hammers and other violent looking implements? Absolutely. The amount of confidence wielding a power tool can garner is tremendous, but using it with skill and knowledge puts one up a notch when compared with those of us without such abilities. Dexterity and ingenuity are made from this. That is, thinking something, while knowing you can build it. Children dream up so many great and wonderful things, but few will see them to reality. Getting tools in their hands early allows them to become skillful enough to utilize what is needed and know when to use it. And here I think technology in the form of YouTube and the Internet in general is very helpful.
 
Our Nature is in Control
 
     I think something must be said regarding the unique spirit that nature-based activites offer. With what was said about collecting sports stats compared to bird watching or just plain hiking, while the former was derided and the latter two celebrated, I can see the similarities as well and therefore the argument. The defining character of hiking or lichen collecting is the infinite creative element of nature. When in nature, whether a city or national park we are immersed in un-worked creations. Everywhere we look or touch has the capacity to become something. There is nothing that cannot be made from nature because ultimately everything including electronic media was put together from it. It is the ultimate loose-parts play-ground. What would poetry be without the analogies from the natural world? What about music or self-discovery? I bring these seemingly tangential ideas along to illustrate the specific difference of collecting sports stats or gaming from anything done in concert with nature. We must see the radical significance of fecundity in a sunset, violent and judgmental, baring down over the oaks with sherbet petals lying at their feet, all tucked in with grasses of green and yellow, swaying and nodding as they so often do. This is active creation, actively creating, while we sit there still but burning.
 
The Last Word
 
     Hobbies are rich in education, where desire and need meet, forcing learning from necessity. Hobbies are rich in joy, built on self-improvement, giving confidence a platform. Hobbies turn Tolstoy’s dictum, “You cannot teach a child what he does not want to learn,” inside out, “A child cannot but learn when he desires to create something.” I think hobbies can do nothing but good for us.
     In the final analysis, I would suppose hobbies are at odds with our contemporary vision. Beginning and then practicing something that could become one’s hobby is probably more fragmented than ever because of the hysterical level of expectation today. The screen has become a Rabelais-Tower-of-Babel reaching in, contorting our ideas before we create them. The inability for quiet, for reasoning, for humble self-exposure is nowhere to be found. The fear and idea of humiliation when exposing ourselves is justified with the panopticon we invite into our lives through the electronic media we all love. And with this comes it shadow, the nagging fear we feed that we might miss something. The screens and the speed of our lives do not want what the hobby has to give us; a sort of envelope of our own time, caught up in something only we can see, doing something that won’t garner Facebook Likes or Instagram Followers.

There are too many options for most of our life’s needs. Anytime we go to the store or Amazon we are forced to look at reviews, compare prices, options, styles and on and on. There are alternatives to pretty much any product on the market until suddenly we come to our children’s playgrounds. Any park our family has stopped at from New Mexico to New Hampshire is basically the same: swings, a slide, and some sort of platform. In city parks, National parks, private lands these play areas have withstood the free market force of research driven change or even novelty. Of all the products that could improve with research I think kids’ play areas ranks fairly high. But instead their form has been concretized.

What are the expectations for our kids regarding these play areas? What is the functional vision for these areas? It seems they could come with a plan or instructional booklet, because many are uni-directional, (“Don’t climb up the slide”, How many times have we heard that?) which amounts to running in circles with obstacles. Is this what we take them to the park for? And they have much fun doing this, but kids are amazing. Children trapped in war torn countries play soccer with tin cans and bare feet and have a great time doing it, but there is so much more that could be done. My kids won’t even attempt that game.

Playgrounds hold the potential to see children through a great deal and fill some of what childhood asks, the more obvious being: novel things, physical and mental challenges, and freedom tinctured with safety. Curiosity at times appears to be the motor for the child, driving them on and on, and giving them answers only spawns more questions. What does our basic play area do for this force? Well, unless they’re interested in tensile strength of rubber-coated steel, there’s not much to feed them here.

As far as freedom and challenges…. With nowhere to hide from sight or anything manipulative, I don’t know what kind of freedom these structures offer. As far as a challenge of some sorts, they offer stairs, which sometimes a toddler finds daunting, but other than those there is really nothing to cause alarm. How safe can we make a play place? Well it does seem we have hit the limit some ways back.

We wonder why so many children lack a healthy self-esteem after we have taken away challenges and replaced them with safety. I don’t think we have the ability to believe in ourselves if we are never tested - at least it is more difficult.

More often then not my family has found these structures in the open with the blazing sun heating the whole place to a searing point. If the swing is a meditative endeavor why is set out in the direct heat, where meditation becomes hallucinating? Where was the market force when we needed it? It appears the impetus for the whole thing is not from the child but rather to the child. I mean to say; it’s a chainsaw for an eight-year-old, a present bought without asking or knowing what the person wants or desires. This is easily grasped by realizing all the parks are the same: climate, culture, demographic has no bearing. These play structures are not the end all, ultimate in fun. We know that there is room for improvement. The parks are built and we bring our children; parents buy play equipment and expect kids to play on it. Have the parks investigated what is useful for play? Have parents investigated what is useful for play? Innovation for play areas seems to be waiting for us to say something.

What are our expectations for play areas? We, parents, ought to set for ourselves a standard of some sort for them, recognizing their power for our children. If you Pinterest or google images “natural play” or wild play” or something to that effect, (which I have done on my blog and you can visit) you can start to see the amazing creativity and challenge and fun that’s out there. I’m sure we know how ingenious our children can be at times. How creative they are and how this creativity builds on itself, becoming richer and more complex. With outdoor play areas we have the ability to nurture these bursts of verve. Once we have a certain notion of play’s ability and breadth we can grade the parks with that scale.

Whatever their design describes, practically speaking through observation this equipment is used from five to nine years of our kids’ play life. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could expand those numbers, so our thirteen year olds found it interesting and fun? What if a fifteen year old could actually “play” with their siblings and enjoy it? Take a look at the Pinterest stuff. There are options out there.

Once we see the problem and are holding the fire what do we do with it? Get involved. We ought to find out who is the person holding the power to change the parks in our neighborhood. What about our homeowner associations and their ability to transform an existing play area or start one? The organizations responsible for the park and play equipment don’t want to spend money. New or novel play places don’t need to be expensive; in fact, it is the cheapest materials that give the most transitional, open play abilities. Logs are great things for kids, piles of dirt, gravel, sand are wonderful, loose toys like sticks for forts, huge stones are all easily constructed and inexpensive. Organized groups can maintain flowerbeds even with edibles in order to complicate the play experience. Possibly a play group could take the local play area away from the city’s responsibility. This would force weekends at the park maintaining and novelizing it. It would be a focus other than sports and school, so whatever one’s preference, I guess.

If we want to see our kids outside, then we need to give them reasons to get out there. The more fun it is to be outside the more likely they are to go.

Guiding your child through life requires winding through or around some certain conversations from certain influences. Within the small circuit of friendly discussions, I find at times some conversations are not “my” child appropriate. Not to mean the topics are XXX neon sign or blood drenched murder implement level only for my child’s maturity, comprehension level or social understanding they are not constructive. When this comes about I struggle to remove my child or reroute the conversation. This is a basic parental action, I think. And it’s a description of a single conversation at a particular time with a single person. Enter cable. Guiding, winding, ignoring influences that do not build your child is by and large futile. Now we have three to five commercials separating our random programs into fifteen to twenty sections. This builds quite a crowd of indiscriminate people having indiscriminate conversations in your living room, a crowd that awaits parental approval to stay or go.
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Why do we invite so many strangers into our lives? Often, we say that it is only way to stay informed about our culture and the global goings on. Also, so many cable shows are educational and the whole family sitting around learning can’t be all bad. Lastly, we love to be entertained. The whole cable industry is built on these pilings, raising it up to a near mythical need.

It seems at times that the daily news is scripted into four categories: global natural catastrophe, global political catastrophe, world leaders or celebrities acting immoral and the bizarre. Day to day offers slight changes for each category, so that a weekly glance is sufficient to stay abreast. But if we are such a person that carries responsibilities so that we are forced to know moment-to-moment news, is it worth watching all the commercials in between? For most of us, not under global responsibilities, who don’t have any ability to practically change the situation, this constant memorial of our ineptitude will probably lead to depression. Seeing constant carnage with no ability to help can’t lead to shiny happy people. Ought we to pace ourselves in this sphere?

Guiding your child through life requires winding through or around some certain conversations from certain influences. Within the small circuit of friendly discussions, I find at times some conversations are not “my” child appropriate. Not to mean the topics are XXX neon sign or blood drenched murder implement level only for my child’s maturity, comprehension level or social understanding they are not constructive. When this comes about I struggle to remove my child or reroute the conversation. This is a basic parental action, I think. And it’s a description of a single conversation at a particular time with a single person. Enter cable. Guiding, winding, ignoring influences that do not build your child is by and large futile. Now we have three to five commercials separating our random programs into fifteen to twenty sections. This builds quite a crowd of indiscriminate people having indiscriminate conversations in your living room, a crowd that awaits parental approval to stay or go.

Why do we invite so many strangers into our lives? Often, we say that it is only way to stay informed about our culture and the global goings on. Also, so many cable shows are educational and the whole family sitting around learning can’t be all bad. Lastly, we love to be entertained. The whole cable industry is built on these pilings, raising it up to a near mythical need.

It seems at times that the daily news is scripted into four categories: global natural catastrophe, global political catastrophe, world leaders or celebrities acting immoral and the bizarre. Day to day offers slight changes for each category, so that a weekly glance is sufficient to stay abreast. But if we are such a person that carries responsibilities so that we are forced to know moment-to-moment news, is it worth watching all the commercials in between? For most of us, not under global responsibilities, who don’t have any ability to practically change the situation, this constant memorial of our ineptitude will probably lead to depression. Seeing constant carnage with no ability to help can’t lead to shiny happy people. Ought we to pace ourselves in this sphere?

​In our home, in education or living, we’ve always struggled to allow concentration to have its way. When the kids have shut out, through play, all thoughts toward anything else, the schedule is often realigned. I know it takes work to concentrate, task or leisure centered, so when I see them focused on a thing; a game, figurine play, sewing etc. it is difficult for me to find something more important for them to do. It seems to me that facilitating their habits or abilities to concentrate is giving them a certain greater gift than that small piece of information that was planned in our school schedule. Practicing prolonged concentration in a busy world always reminds me of Jack London’s To Light A Fire; it is a necessary thing to be done in the midst of great opposition.

​When we concentrate, all or very much of, our intellectual tenants are pointed at one single thing, magnifying the subtleties and finding the ironies. This requires us, in some degree, to bracket or push aside all things not necessary to the point. (I have always marveled at readers in busy public places.) Taken together these actions allow us to grasp the thing for a prolonged time, filling ourselves with the object and nothing else. Whatever the object, this is how we make it a part of ourselves.

This is how we build our intellectual homes. One could hardly find the mysteries in our world without applying these mental pressures unless we strain intuition to breaking point. All reality to some extent requires us to set upon it with these mental claws. The greatest of searches, that one for ourselves, requires much energy and relies on a deep penetration done with focus. In fact, if we don’t want to slog through life with knee-jerk responses, we admit that honor, love, forgiveness—most any saintly act—and even emotions require concentration for a proper response. For one not to simply grow older, but in order to mature as well, the ability to concentrate must also develop in relation.

​Saturday was filled with building, and building! I've been the Executive Director (and Walter and kiddos, volunteers) of the Environmental Learning Center for four years now; and we were excited to move the Center's annual benefit to its 64-acre nature campus for the first time in a decade. While I prepped that morning for the evening's logistics and commentary, Walter and kiddos built - in our driveway - a beautiful outdoor projection screen of wood and canvas. The screen was key to the evening's fundraising; and Center staff and community members will be able to use it for many, multi-purposed events outdoors into the future.