On a mundane Saturday night during lockdown last year, I was tapping through Instagram Stories to pass the time. Like so many millennials, I turn to the app mostly to send my friends memes and screenshots that sum up universal truths about our late-twenties lifestyle. A tweet—made into an Instagram post—by Canadian author Jonny Sun caught my attention. It read:
I’m an ADULT
which means I don’t have any HOBBIES
If I have any FREE TIME AT ALL
I will go LIE DOWN
I came to a stark realization: I don’t have any hobbies—and nobody else I knew seemed to either. It had been nearly a decade since I played the piano. Aside from the dodgeball league I joined impromptu at the height of unemployment one year, I never fostered the time and commitment toward a joyful activity when I wasn’t on the clock.
In the first several months of the pandemic, I remember calculating the weekly hours I saved by not commuting and asking myself how I could use that time more effectively. Naturally, I relied on Instagram trends to help with my identity crisis. I started by aggressively completing an adult colouring book while everyone around me made body-shaped candles. Photos of sourdough baking and people concocting at-home “quarantinis” cluttered my timeline. While these activities captured the zeitgeist of the pandemic—especially in those early months—I allowed myself to believe that in the midst of those hours between solving puzzles and baking bread, my hobby would…
