A useful hobby ain’t no hobby
September 16th, 2006Lorelle’s blogging challenge strikes again: ‘blog about your hobby’. This immediately triggers the question: ‘what is my hobby ?’. If you had asked this question fifteen years ago, I could have answered right away: ‘playing the flute and tennis’ (not simultaneously). Unfortunately, I have not opened my flute case or racket bag more than four or five times in the past ten years, which surely disqualifies both my historical occupations as hobbies.
I am sitting on a heap of free-time
I work part-time, four days each week, for an approximate total of 35 hours. This leaves me with 133 hours of non-working time. Take off 70 hours sleeping and eating, and 14 hours dedicated to household chores and kid-care, that leaves me with a world-record 49 hours of free time each week — more than my work-time. Give me a minute to calm down and check my computations, I had never reckoned those figures before… Yes, I confirm: I have an average seven hours of free time per day ! And I have not even taken my six weeks yearly vacation into account…(boy, am I glad to live in France !)
What to do with such a treasure
To tell you the truth, this wealth is completely intentional (except the ‘living in France’ bit): I once chose to take advantage of my skills and degrees to reach the best quality of life I could, leaving the financial ambition part to colleagues. Not a day passes without my congratulating myself over this choice. This makes for a lifestyle radically different from everybody around me, so much richer and balanced.
Now let me get to the point: what do I do with such a treasure ? A while back, I would have spoilt it on DVDs, bonsaï grooming, sewing, hiking, photography and writing. Then my wife and I bought an old XVIIIth century farmhouse with only the walls left standing, to restore it from head to toe. On our own, with our smallish hands and wrists of spoilt intellectual city-dwellers, we who had never lifted anything heavier than a cordless mouse (and then only when said mouse reached the edges of the mousepad).
Now we have become experts in eco-friendly restoration and neo-rural lifestyle, and the following occupations take up a large portion of our free-time:
- Woodworking: floorboards, doors, all sorts of furniture
- Carpentry, roofing, masonry
- Terracotta tiles on lime concrete slabs
- Lime-and-hemp cob separations
- Wall primary insulation plaster with hemp fibres, sand and lime
- Wall finish coating with fine sand and lime
- Lime-based paint with natural iron oxides
- Electricity and plumbing
- Keeping the vegetable garden under control
- Reaping the wild prairie patch after patch because my lawnmower was delivered too late in the spring
- Chainsawing the heap of wood I have had delivered for next winter
- Making tomato sauce preserves
- Preparing blackberry jam
- Picking cider apples
- Cooking sweet chestnut puree
- Raising a baby in the middle of it (the restoration, not the chestnut puree)
But these are not hobbies. Although building me hoise w’them awn hands o’moine was a dream a’come true n’still is n’unsubsoiding passion; although grawing me own food from me own soil is bouth a fantasy n’a miracle; although rural french cuisine is th’reward for the toil, these activities do not qualify as hobbies: they are useful.
What is left, then ?
If we do not count any of the occupations that bring explicit or hidden profits (not paying craftsmen, not eating junk food, not buying furniture), what is left is just reading, writing, and photography. These are truly gratuitous (even costly) endeavours, for which I wish I had more time — is this not exactly the definition of a hobby ?
Read on
What I know best
Changing the world in half-a-minute
The happiest person in the world
19.99 non-commecial things
Mellow moments
Boasting some: what I know best
Wow, what an idyllic lifestyle! I wish I lived in France - I did for a year, down near Agen in the Lot et Garonne. I always felt I had more time on my hands in France than I did in the UK. It is such a serene country (outside of Paris). The photograph is beautiful too - is it a local view?
If you let the mouse linger over the the picture, you should see ‘Brittany rocks’: I took this picture in late august while on vacation in Northern Brittany. Except for the weather, Brittany rocked.
I will have a special prize for the reader who can pinpoint the exact spot.
Well, this explains your response to my notion of heaven.
Like you, I once also made the decision to seek a more personally fulfilling life, and this meant taking a huge pay cut. I don’t regret it for a minute: I now work doing what I love, and somehow things have worked out to let me freelance and be master and commander of my own time. I don’t need to be filthy rich… Much prefer to be happy and make a living doing what I love.
As usual, excellent. I’m enthralled with your analysis of how much time you have, free and otherwise. What a brilliant way to look at it, and a good point about how you spend it.
As a note, the “alt” tag in images doesn’t show in Firefox browsers, though it still has to be there. A “title” tag, which you can add if you add these manually, will appear in Firefox. Just a strange quirk in the program I find troublesome, but I will not go back to IE.
And great challenge by the way. Northern Brittany is on my list of wannagoes-but-haven’ts. You got me itching again!
Maria: I managed the pay-cut part gradually, starting by not choosing the best-paid field (aerospace attracts so many fine engineer, no need to pay them, right ? whereas banking is so boring you have to pay guys millions — at least that’s what I pretend to believe). Then I chose part-time bit-by-bit: by converting my yearly bonus in vacation (this is pretty much painless), then by choosing 90% part-time (I computed that with the raises I had got, it was just a matter of going back 3 to 4 years in time, no big deal). I’ll probably go to 80% sooner or later, or telecommute when my boss is ready.
Lorelle: I am afraid the prize I am mentioning will not cover the expenses of going to Brittany, especially if you have to walk the so many miles of seashore. But yes, for one who likes marine landscapes, Brittany and Corsica are probably the two finest spots France has on display.
Interesting analysis.
To be fair you should add some extra hours commuting - even if they can be considered as ‘not lost’ time.
What I find interesting is that you came to the conclusion that you were trying to reach the life style that so many people are willing to quit… but nevertheless, it is really challenging life that you have chosen, and quite attractive indeed. Congratulations!
Do you confirm that the first step is the hardest (psycho) and then all events may combine together so that you can only be more and more convinced of having done ‘the right choice’… but that must be a terrifying experience to be the only ones to have made the right choice.
concerning the special prize, I vote for northern brittany rocky shores, in the vicinity of Roscof. this is called in french the ‘cote de granite rose’…
Congratulations Benoit. To be more accurate, the exact spot is Tregastel, the name of the squarish rock in the background is ‘le dé’ (the dice). You have won the special prize — just give me a couple of days to figure out what it is
I confirm that the psychological step is a bit hard, but I have not taken the giant’s leap of quitting my job altogether (yet ?). As for the right choice, I am convinced it is right for me and my family, but I cannot tell about others.
I don’t totally agree with you that something you do that is useful can not be a hobby. Just because you grow your vegetables and eat them does not mean your gardening is not a hobby. I believe that hobby is something that you do that you love. Yes, gardening brings a benefit. I don’t really know about where you live, but I am sure that you could find good fresh food to eat that was not junk food without having a garden. I have vegetable and flower gardens here. I find they take a lot of time, and I could just go to the store and buy vegetables. By the time I count the value of the time spent in the garden, my produce is pretty darned expensive. But I keep growing because I love the process just as much as the product. That makes it more than just a job, it is a hobby as well. But perhaps my definition of hobby is not as strict as yours.
You are definitely right, but then under your definition, my main job would qualify as a hobby (i.e. I enjoy it very much and I often do more than strictly needed). I certainly would not want my employer to discover that I consider my job as a hobby
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