Meme, Day 06
Day 06: Your hobbies
I suppose my first and foremost hobby has always been and will always be reading. I'm on pace to read over a hundred books this year, and while I am unemployed and that's bumping up my total, I'm sure that there hasn't been a year since elementary school when I read less than 50 books. I blame my parents. They got concerned at the amount of television I was watching back in the 3rd grade, so they limited me to five hours a week -- including the shows we watched as a family, like Star Trek: The Next Generation and Home Improvement -- but they let me roll over any unused time so I could save it up if there was something I really wanted to watch coming on later. By the time I stopped counting I had over a hundred hours in the bank. (What's that you say? Why didn't I go out and play? Well, there was the issue of my parents being a little protective and not wanting me outside unsupervised, and there was the issue of being terrified of bugs. . . but mostly it's because reading is WAY more fun than getting all hot and sweaty. *grin*)
As to what I read. . . it's mostly science fiction and fantasy, with a generous helping of mystery novels and non-fiction that piques my interest. That non-fiction usually means popular science books (particularly about medicine or ecology) but also extends to anything that seems useful for what I'm writing at the time.
Which brings me to hobby #2: writing. I've been doing this as long as I can remember too -- again, sometime in elementary school I had this really awesome Big Book that was nothing but pages about 2 feet tall where the top half was an empty square (designed for you to illustrate) and the bottom half was those three-tier lines designed to help little kids learn to form their letters properly (which was clearly intended for you to write the story of your illustration). I believe I filled it with stories about dinosaurs. It's gotta be saved somewhere (I can't imagine my parents throwing it away) but I have no idea where.
And I've been writing in my spare time ever since. I wrote during class, if I was bored; I wrote during recess and lunch; I wrote during all my school breaks. Now I tend to structure my writing a little more -- I have a color in my agenda book specifically to note when I write (and yes that means my agenda is color-coded) -- and I will admit I'm still not very good at finishing things (the furthest on any novel I've ever gotten is somewhere around 50-60 pages) but someday. My writing shares the same taste as my reading; almost exclusively fantasy (I don't feel I have the imagination for good SF) with the occasional dabble in mystery.
Should I list daydreaming as a separate hobby? I certainly do a lot of it. . . but it shares quite a few characteristics with my writing time, as my daydreams are invariably structured. I get all the romances in my system out in my daydreams so they don't infect my fantasy too badly, y'see. But they are certainly plotted, and I flesh out the characters (none of whom is ever me), and sometimes I even do thematic work, so my daydreams really are a function of my storytelling hobby.
I suppose I have to list television as a hobby. I watch much more of it now that I'm with my BF than I did when I lived at home (though, inconsistent as they are, my parents now watch tons more television than I was ever allowed). I tend to watch dramas which are procedurals of some sort, and I cannot abide long-form storytelling on television -- y'know, the stuff where there is no story arc to individual episodes, just to seasons or the series as a whole. (Actually, I can't abide that sort of storytelling in any medium; it's why I read very few series, and those that I do read the authors take care to make the individual volumes stand reasonably well on their own.) Current television favorites include House, Criminal Minds, Chuck, and The Big Bang Theory; past favorites include Star Trek: TNG, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and numerous shows that got cancelled after only one or two seasons because the rest of the world isn't as cool as me. ;)
And those are probably my major hobbies; playing music I addressed in my post on Day 04 (and I probably only spend 1-2 hours a week on it); I go to the gym, but it's fairly sporadic (though I was on the track team in high school, so there's always a chance this time I'll be able to make a habit of working out); I could talk about the excessive amount of pets my BF and I have, but most of the time I spend with them is more like chore time than hobby time; and all that (plus time spent online here and on some book websites) fills my day pretty full.
I suppose my first and foremost hobby has always been and will always be reading. I'm on pace to read over a hundred books this year, and while I am unemployed and that's bumping up my total, I'm sure that there hasn't been a year since elementary school when I read less than 50 books. I blame my parents. They got concerned at the amount of television I was watching back in the 3rd grade, so they limited me to five hours a week -- including the shows we watched as a family, like Star Trek: The Next Generation and Home Improvement -- but they let me roll over any unused time so I could save it up if there was something I really wanted to watch coming on later. By the time I stopped counting I had over a hundred hours in the bank. (What's that you say? Why didn't I go out and play? Well, there was the issue of my parents being a little protective and not wanting me outside unsupervised, and there was the issue of being terrified of bugs. . . but mostly it's because reading is WAY more fun than getting all hot and sweaty. *grin*)
As to what I read. . . it's mostly science fiction and fantasy, with a generous helping of mystery novels and non-fiction that piques my interest. That non-fiction usually means popular science books (particularly about medicine or ecology) but also extends to anything that seems useful for what I'm writing at the time.
Which brings me to hobby #2: writing. I've been doing this as long as I can remember too -- again, sometime in elementary school I had this really awesome Big Book that was nothing but pages about 2 feet tall where the top half was an empty square (designed for you to illustrate) and the bottom half was those three-tier lines designed to help little kids learn to form their letters properly (which was clearly intended for you to write the story of your illustration). I believe I filled it with stories about dinosaurs. It's gotta be saved somewhere (I can't imagine my parents throwing it away) but I have no idea where.
And I've been writing in my spare time ever since. I wrote during class, if I was bored; I wrote during recess and lunch; I wrote during all my school breaks. Now I tend to structure my writing a little more -- I have a color in my agenda book specifically to note when I write (and yes that means my agenda is color-coded) -- and I will admit I'm still not very good at finishing things (the furthest on any novel I've ever gotten is somewhere around 50-60 pages) but someday. My writing shares the same taste as my reading; almost exclusively fantasy (I don't feel I have the imagination for good SF) with the occasional dabble in mystery.
Should I list daydreaming as a separate hobby? I certainly do a lot of it. . . but it shares quite a few characteristics with my writing time, as my daydreams are invariably structured. I get all the romances in my system out in my daydreams so they don't infect my fantasy too badly, y'see. But they are certainly plotted, and I flesh out the characters (none of whom is ever me), and sometimes I even do thematic work, so my daydreams really are a function of my storytelling hobby.
I suppose I have to list television as a hobby. I watch much more of it now that I'm with my BF than I did when I lived at home (though, inconsistent as they are, my parents now watch tons more television than I was ever allowed). I tend to watch dramas which are procedurals of some sort, and I cannot abide long-form storytelling on television -- y'know, the stuff where there is no story arc to individual episodes, just to seasons or the series as a whole. (Actually, I can't abide that sort of storytelling in any medium; it's why I read very few series, and those that I do read the authors take care to make the individual volumes stand reasonably well on their own.) Current television favorites include House, Criminal Minds, Chuck, and The Big Bang Theory; past favorites include Star Trek: TNG, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and numerous shows that got cancelled after only one or two seasons because the rest of the world isn't as cool as me. ;)
And those are probably my major hobbies; playing music I addressed in my post on Day 04 (and I probably only spend 1-2 hours a week on it); I go to the gym, but it's fairly sporadic (though I was on the track team in high school, so there's always a chance this time I'll be able to make a habit of working out); I could talk about the excessive amount of pets my BF and I have, but most of the time I spend with them is more like chore time than hobby time; and all that (plus time spent online here and on some book websites) fills my day pretty full.