Analeptic Alzabo

Or: How do you explain your hobby to a non-hobbyist

I am of an advanced enough age where I can claim to have been hobbying for “a long time now”.  Throughout the one score and seven years of this time I have witnessed and been party to many changing trends and advancements in the acceptance and accessibility to partaking in a plethora of niche communities and interests.  From the early days of mail order magazines, through the infancy and eventual colossal rise of online communities and content all the way to the present, at the doorstep of late stage capitalism where a weeks wages or a lifetime contract of servitude can buy you this week’s latest plastic iteration of Lieutenant Trashcan of the Dumpster Fire Chapter.  

Yet through all these milestones, after every MCU blockbuster, every season of Stranger Things  and through both theatrical adaptations of Dungeons & Dragons, still I suffer over the explanation of a simple question:  What is your Hobby? Perhaps I take for granted that the world takes place outside of my own head.  That for as much as I may be ignorant to the communities of competitive dog grooming or ferret legging so to any given member of the general population may live in exquisite bliss to the siren call of my own unique enthusiasms.  So when faced with this question my answer will, as will be the case with you dear reader, be invariably tied to my own specific fascinations.  

I must take pause here to warn against the expectation that this will be a failsafe guide through the troublesome scenario of explaining to your varied social circles what exactly a Magic: The Gathering is and why anyone should care. For my own part I have had a life long fascination with the building, painting and in later extremes, design and sculpting of what can be surmised as small plastic soldiers.  To the initiated, explaining this would take the form of nothing greater than “I paint sweet Dragons” or “Eye Got Dem Nasty Orks”.  However greater care is needed for the unacquainted when introducing them to this particular level of neurodivergence.  In past I used to take great pains to lay out my collection of painted figures, explaining the minute details of the sculpt and the attention to detail in the painting.  Often enough the observer would be suitably impressed by the visual display often remarking on the fine motor skills that must be needed to fill in the pupils on a 1/64 scale face.  But further attempts at trying to pull them into the abstract facets of designers, sculptors, companies and manufacturers invariably leads to an immediate diminished return.  There is something inherently unsexy about explaining how the qualities of company X lead to inferior injection molding than company Y and that leads to hours of clean up due to slippage and mold lines.   

It seems almost inevitable that in these situations one must look inward and see that they in fact are responsible in some way for having interests that make them completely alienated and unapproachable.  Would it not be easier for us to join the maddening crowd and lose ourselves in a more agreeable past time, one that our friends and family may relate to and share common sentiment on?   Should our endeavors conform to the expectations of others so that they may share the maximal amount of relatability. Would we be better off allowing the almighty algorithm to determine what we should say and do so that we may reach the maximal amount of disinterested and vacuous viewers?  

If I belabor the point with these grotesque scenarios it is to instill in you this one message: this hobby, your hobby, whatever that may be, is for you.  There is no gain or enrichment in pursuing something for the adoration of others, lest that adoration become your sole aim and all endeavors of personal enrichment and growth become as alien and inexplicable as my hobbies are to others.  “If we are true to ourselves, we cannot be false to anyone” is a quote I got from Qoute.com.  Yet this hastily picked extract from a noble mind is like to shed some truth on our question.  That truth:  that in the very act of being ourselves we relay the most exhaustive explanation of ourselves that can be had.  

And so, my dear reader, we come to it at last, the great question of our time: How do you explain your hobby to a non-hobbyist?  I simply answer: don’t try to.  There is nothing that can be sincerely communicated in the banal act of reducing your mind to the vulgar symbols and guttural syllables of language.  I encourage you instead to invite your would be wayfarer into the intimate confines of your hobby. Have them smell the fresh paint on the palette or the fumes of the glue as it welds plastic together.  Don’t tell them the difference between a mold milled with a Pantograph or a CNC, let them experience the difference.  Place ancient relics with slips bigger than Freud's into their hands and see how they come to grips interpreting the details.  

So when the inevitable question comes: 'What is your hobby?' resist the urge to explain. Instead, extend a brush, a die, or a half-glued relic, and let the act itself speak. For in the end, our passions are not meant to be translated, but shared; not dissected, but lived. And if the uninitiated walk away bewildered, let them. The truest joys are those that need no justification, only the quiet, stubborn devotion of those who love them.

-Kevin