These 2 Hard Things Get Easier When You Combine Them
Photo by John Cameron on Unsplash
TL/DR:
Making time for friends is hard. Making time for hobbies is hard. Doing both at once is easier than doing either one alone.
A hobby done alongside folks who love the same thing is a force multiplier on joy, not a scheduling compromise.
No hobby and no hobby friends? Neither of those has to stay true. Forums, group chats, one-time classes and childhood favorites are all entry points.
You have agency over how you spend your time, which means you get to make choices that force-multiply your joy.
The Whole Shebang:
“How did you guys meet again?”, we asked Slavi, one of my dad’s few friends of his own (i.e. not “couple friends”), when he showed up, a day late and very embarrassed, to my dad’s funeral.
But honestly, we were happy to have him there. We’d heard Slavi’s name, and my mom had met him in passing, but us daughters hadn’t. And we were eager to hear about my dad through someone else’s eyes.
In my mind, Slavi was maybe a little younger than my dad, who died at 79. Turns out, Slavi was closer to the age and me and my sisters. Fascinating.
But back to the question of how they’d met. “Figs for Friends”, Slavi said.
What, pray tell, is “Figs for Friends”?
Well, apparently, it was an online gardening forum specifically for folks who were really into growing fig trees.
And, well, my dad had many “special interests” and growing figs was one of them; he had a veritable orchard in the backyard and during fig season, you’d pretty much never catch him without a few figs in his hands and one in his mouth
(Fun fact: I, too, have fig trees in my backyard. Wanna know why? Because my dad brought them in a suitcase, on a plane, from Seattle to San Francisco many years ago and planted them in my backyard for me. This was not a gift I’d asked for; I wasn’t even aware I was getting it until he showed up and opened his bag.
That’s how into figs my dad was.)
In any case, figs were one of my dad’s hobbies, and he managed to parlay that hobby into a true friendship, with a guy half his age.
Why am I telling you this?
Well, 2 reasons:
As you might have heard me say before, my dad was a man who used his time in accordance with his values, his goals and his interests. Something I both deeply admire, and also try to emulate.
Through his hobbies, my dad gained friends.
Look, I’m willing to bet that you have a least a few friends that you haven’t made time for recently (not totally your fault, I’m sure, everyone’s busy!).
It’s hard to make time for friends. And it’s hard to make time for hobbies.
But, and hear me out here, what if you combined the two?? This is like the double jackpot of joy, doing something that brings you joy WITH people who bring you joy?
What, what’s that you said? You don’t have any friends who share your hobbies?
That’s OK. My dad didn’t either, until he found the “Figs for Friends” forum.
And me? Well, when I started getting deeply into pottery a few years back (like, it’s a serious addiction; I’m at the studio 3-5 times a week AND I run a business and am raising teenagers), well, I didn’t have any friends who were into pottery.
But, three years later, I literally can’t set foot in my community studio without running into someone who I now consider a friend.
So, when I go to the pottery studio, it’s a double duty, type of experience. It’s a force multiplier on joy.
I get to engage in an activity I truly enjoy, and chat about it with friends who are also super into the same thing.
It brings me endless satisfaction and has seriously improved the quality of my life (and I like to think I had a pretty damn good quality of life before pottery (“BP”, if you will…sorry, I couldn’t stop myself), too.
Now, you might be thinking “fascinating, but I don’t have a hobby” or “my hobby is something I do solo”.
And both, or either, of those things might be true.
But they don’t have to be.
Because you, well, you have agency over your own life. You can make choices about how you want to spend your time.
And you can make choices that force-multiply your joy.
So, what does this mean for you?
Well, you can take whatever moral you want from it.
But, here’s what I might suggest.
If this feels unattainable, start small. Try one thing, one time. Or start with 1 hour, once a month. Make it feel super doable, exciting and fun, vs. an insurmountable hurdle to find the right thing and the time to do it. Or sign up for a time limited, or one time, class.
If you don’t have a hobby already, try one. Not sure what to try? Try to remember what types of activities you liked to do as a child; the bonus here is that it likely didn’t require much in the way of supplies! Or you could ask your favorite LLM (who might “know” you better than you feel comfortable with). Or ask some friends what hobbies they enjoy. (In fact, my sister just told me about a book all about different hobbies called “Cozy Hobbies”, my Kennedy Rose, that can help you identify a hobby to try.)
If you don’t have any friends who do your hobby, look around for a forum, like “Figs for Friends”, but for whatever hobby you have, or want to try. Or text one of your group chats to see if you have a friend who’s into your hobby. Or post on social media to see if folks in your circle want to meet up to do this hobby with you.
If you don’t want to spend anytime away from your kiddos, find something you can try with them. (I’m currently taking an on-line, on-demand drawing class with one of my kids). While I’m not advocating you become your kid’s best friend, cause that’s probably not too healthy for either of you, it could be fun for both of you.
What’s your current hobby and who do you do it with?
And if you’re not sure how you can even make the time for a hobby (or your friends!) at all, here are 4 ways we can work together:
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