3.23.03 – confessions of a dilettante

i’ll just come out and say it now: i have commitment issues. it’s not what you think; i am capable of carrying on stable, long-term relationships, i can choose colors paint colors and not regret having a twilight-grey living room two weeks later, i can make plans and show up at the appointed hour. no, no, it’s nothing like that. but i can’t, so help me god, commit to a hobby. my interests ebb and flow: first it was sewing my own clothes, nintendo and gymnastics. in junior high school it was ballet, cheerleading and then computers, in high school it was native american cultural studies, writing poetry, and communing with nature. during college i lived and breathed drama, dabbled in japanese, learned to waltz and attempted to knit. after graduating i started this blog and adopted a cat; last year i acquired a digital camera, then an mp3 player and a second-hand bicycle.

the sports i’ve participated in since grade school include (in no particular order) soccer, softball, basketball, horseback riding, skiing, cross-country, track, gymnastics, ballet, jazz, modern and social dance, tennis, yoga, aikido, weight training, kickboxing, and pilates. i buy cookbooks that gather dust on the shelves and leave veggies in the crisper to rot. scrap booking projects grow tedious halfway through and i toss the ticket stubs and photographs and glue sticks into a box on the top shelf. i’ve attempted to play the piano, the flute, the native american flute and the guitar (still can’t manage happy birthday on any of them). other hobbies include hypochondria, scouring the web for low-priced airfare, and impromptu international travel.

i used to be embarrassed by my lack of commitment. i’d glower when my father would remind me of my many abandon pursuits gathering spiders in the garage. but why, exactly, do i need to commit to a single hobby? if hobbies exist to make me happy, relaxed, and stress-free, then why pressure myself into a corner? i’m interested in the whole world. there simply isn’t time for me to become an expert on any of it. the internet is my best friend; i go running for my computer at any hour of the day to learn how to buff scratches out of my car’s paint, what pine-needles will to do to soil pH, how to make a soy-milk smoothie, and what time the global peace rally takes place. on a fundamental level, learning new things is my hobby. i grow bored quickly with repetitive tasks or the things that i already know. it’s also probably why i’ve chosen a career field in which i’ve never had to hold the same job for more than 6 months. theatre is something that i have made a commitment to. maybe the gravity of committing to a career that sometimes demands enormous sacrifices encourages me to seek freedom from other sorts of commitments. at any rate, one of the best things about my career is that i start a new project every 2-4 months. a totally new challenge, new people, new subject matter, often even a new theatre or a new city. it keeps me awake and alive. (apologies to peter gabriel)

there’s the obvious cost in hop-scotching hobbies to consider; but as a child i had parents who wouldn’t fork over a dime for acid-wash jeans, but were willing to spend entire paychecks encouraging their children’s intellectual pursuits. these days i try to stay away from equipment-heavy activities. and while i might not be as committed to cheerleading as i was at 13 (thank god), i’ve taken parts of all of these hobbies on with me. i appreciate sports i’ll never really be good at. i dance in my living room when no one is looking, i knit the occasional misshapen scarf for someone who, out of loyalty, has to wear it at least once. i still use the digital camera regularly, albeit with less fervor than at first. i have scrapbooks to remind me of college, a sufficient grasp on japanese to exchange pleasantries with foreign-exchange students, and a couple of knock-out recipes tucked away for the occasional dinner party.

so my newest project is organic gardening. i admit i’m starting from zero knowledge on the subject (i was spelling organic with a ‘t’ in the middle), but that has rarely daunted me. why gardening? because i have a yard, and ideologically, i’m interested in exploring the connection between ourselves and the food we eat and how that connection changes when we change the relationship from grocery store-mouth to garden-to-mouth. why organic gardening? because i want to raise vegetables without chemicals, because have you read the research on what this shit does to the body?, because i want to find a way to live on the earth in a gentler fashion. if we buy biodegradable soap, cruelty-free beauty products and hormone-free eggs, how could i justify dousing the backyard in chemicals just so my yard will be greener than next door? one of my gardening books included a quiz: do you suffer from suburban peer-pressure? given that one of our next-door neighbors is a crazy cat lady, and the other place houses a bunch of college students who regularly toss subway wrappers and miller-lite cans into our yard, i feel no envy.

library books on organic gardening bury the new coffee table and i’ve posted questions on gardening websites about soil pH and companion planting. i’m compiling lists of what veggies i want to grow and plotting which section of the yard gets the most sun. the intent was to plant a vegetable garden, but when i looked outside last week, i realized that the entire yard needs some organic lovin’. two years of dead leaves and pine needles three-inches thick needed to be raked up off of the ground, revealing grass that had died for lack of water and sunlight, and petrified dog plop left from two-owners-ago. grass seed needs to be sown and coddled, the mulch pile turned and umm, encouraged? to turn into dirt. the hedges require taming, the prickly weeds picked out of the front bed, the daffodils rescued from the pick of bricks they’re trying to bloom underneath. i’m not going to discriminate; if it’s green and doesn’t have thistles, and it wants to grow in my yard, it’s welcome to do so.

like the ones before it, this isn’t a hobby that will likely stay with me forever. this time next year, i expect to be living in a microscopic apartment in chicago, far from open plots of land or fertile soil. but for this year, i’ve been given the gift of a house with a yard, and the opportunity to reexamine my relationship with food, dirt, and earthworms.