Good Will Hobby (In The Hobby Space) by Kevin

My hobby space, at any point in my decades long venture through my hobbies, could probably tell you more about me in that moment than any indulgent try at self reflection ever could. It started on the family dinner table, until an unfortunate accident with a pot of Boltgun Metal irreversibly re-wrote the rules on that.  Then on a converted chest of drawers in the bedroom that I shared with 2 other teenage boys and their various body odors.  Later on the window sill of my leaky studio slum, with all its exposed plumbing, as I went through art school.  Finally to today and the collection of fine found furniture I have collected through several moving days in my neighborhood.  

Through these many permutations, the scenery, the means, and utility have all been a reflection of my circumstances.  But the one underlying constant, the red thread of causality that ties this whole illogical mess through time and space, has always been the Will to hobby.  The drive to sit, or stand…lie down?,  and engage with this medium of imagination.  

“Very nice words Kevin” I hear you say “but what does your ChatGPT prompts have to say about me?” Fear not fellow travelers, our paths may differ, the roads more labyrinthine, the terrain less sure, the elements unforgivingly tempestuous.  But the Inn at the cross roads just ahead, the one the people say always has a fire to welcome you. Where the beer is always cold and the maids always buxom.  Why, they have room for us all at the table to share a mug and toast our adventures.  

What makes a hobby space?  Various schools of Philosophy have anguished over the problem.  Is it the prefabricated modular desk from IKEA, replete with state of the art lighting, storage and entire ensemble of expensive paraphernalia stamped with impressive adjectives like “Elite”, "Master" or “Pro”.  Is it the forgotten corner in the sunken basement of your childhood home. The one that smells of the various cleaning products stored atop the laundry machine, which seek in vain to cover the odourous notes of mildew and cat litter.  The paragons of thought from antiquity through the age of enlightenment have floundered on this query.  Like ancient mariners on cyclonic seas, they scanned for the beacons of reason to lead them through the mire.  What chance may common minds such as we fair where giants have faltered. 

“Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie”.  Said some guy once I think.  But to take truth from this tangle of Middle-English syntax we may see that there is in fact no tangible answer that is not intertwined with ourselves.  For as the architect dreams of the Cathedral and the Mason conceives the block so do we, in the endeavour to seek the ideal hobby space, take on the mantle of general contractor.  It is by us and through us that our spaces are hewn, roughed and refined from the nebulous building blocks of corners, furniture and comically small versions of tools at our disposal, into the monuments of personal pride and accomplishment that we laud on social media. 

And so dear readers, where can we say we have come to in this long sojourn through my meandering vocabulary?  Perhaps we now know better that a hobby space is more than a collection of products "scientifically" engineered to optimize your hobby time and performance.  That contrary to “Influencers” and Brand Marketing, you cannot distill the magic of creation in a discreet product line or marketing campaign.  Its the sheen of metallic paint staining the family table, the warped surfaces of the childhood desk, its in the way your current projects elbow with last year's obsessions for room.  A Hobby Space is archeology, each strata holding the fossils of a time and place we can now only reconstruct from ossified memories.  It's the remembrance of a forgotten age when we huddled around the fire to ward off the night.  Where we would gather to tell stories and fashion them into paintings on the rock face or statues from antler and bone. You cannot package this. You cannot sell it. It is the part of us that refuses to be streamlined. The part that stains tables, clutters corners, and laughs at the very idea of 'optimization.' So let them preach their empty ergonomic gospels. We’ll be here, knee-deep in the glorious mess of it, building altars to the things that matter only to us.