Category: Personal

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Thinking About Hobbies

My hobbies ebb and flow. I will rekindle a strong interest in some skill, old or new, and maintain it for a few weeks, perhaps months. It’s subsequently replaced by another pursuit.

I’ve realized that most of these interests are not separate; they tend to be manifestations of the same general themes. Any specific hobby tends to involve music, writing, sports, or technology, and during any given time period I’m most likely juggling hobbies from each of those four categories. Understanding this dynamic helps comfort me if a project fizzles out: there will be another one along shortly.

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Rediscovering Guitar: The Purchase

To satiate my recovered and expanding interest in guitar, I decided to use some money from my bonus this year to purchase a nice electric guitar. While I love playing acoustic—they sound beautiful, are easy to pick up, and always feel comfortable to me—electric guitar opens up a new world of effects, sounds, and styles. Plus, with a pair of headphones, you can have the full experience without much noise for everyone around you. Not wanting to waste my money, I dove into research

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Rediscovering Guitar: The Passion

I started learning piano in 2nd grade with an unweighted 61-key digital piano, and an assortment of self-guided piano books. Putting time into piano allowed me to join the percussion section once I started 6th grade.1They didn’t want to teach you how to read music alongside the several instruments you had to learn. Armed with a reasonable knowledge of music, the free time that childhood offers, and experience learning new skills on my own, I began playing guitar in 7th grade.

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    They didn’t want to teach you how to read music alongside the several instruments you had to learn.
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Practicing Missing

I’ve watched and listened to hours of disc golf content across YouTube and podcasts over the past few years. Since I started playing about 9 months ago, an increased portion of that has been focused on instructional content: specific videos about form, techniques, tips and tricks, anything to help me feel more comfortable and consistent on the course.

Just like with regular golf, putting is the most frustrating aspect of the game. Particularly in disc golf, where you are approaching this relatively large basket and all you need to do is throw the disc in from 20 or 30 feet (ideally), it looks childishly easy. Yet I have a lot of trouble with consistency. Sure, I can make a few, but overall I’m missing in pretty much every possible direction during my round. In fact, both on the course and during my warmup I am practicing how to miss.

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Juggling Obligations

I’ve kept myself busy over the last several months. College was the last time I had such a large number of projects and concerns, but most of them were essentially the same. While I would have four or five classes each semester, these all fell under the banner of school, similar to how several work projects are basically the same to me. However, I’ve since begun tutoring and writing curriculum on the side, while trying to maintain some of my other routinized projects. Add wedding and honeymoon planning, and admittedly, some days it feels like I hardly have any time for myself. Working out how to balance all of this is a difficult task.

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Rediscovering the Journal

My older sister gave me a lovely leather-bound journal one month into sixth grade, when all students in my grade went on a week-long trip to a nature center called Eagle Bluff. She encouraged me to use it to keep track of the experience, and I wrote in that journal for most of the next year or two. Looking back, many entries were a bit dramatic, but I think they were accurate to how I felt at the time. It was my first time using a journal, and in particular my first time doing serious introspection. I enjoyed the process, but eventually lost the habit and didn’t try to pick it back up regularly until college.

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