finding a hobby

"We all judge. That's our hobby. Some people do arts and crafts; we judge."
Stanford, Sex and The City

There was a point in my life that I worried because I didn't have a hobby, or a "thing," as I used to say. Then a friend said, "For people like us, our job is our thing." And at the time that was true. When I was working in student affairs I didn't have time for a hobby or anything else that didn't have some connection to either the college where I worked, college students, or Big J and little j. All my friends worked at the college so I didn't even have to leave the office to socialize; although when I did socialize it was with everyone from the office, so we might as well have just built a bar in the administration building.

When I started grad school I had no time for a hobby between the reading, papers and spending time with my family. But then came the dissertation. At first I thought cooking was my hobby, but you can only cook so much without gaining the grad school 20 (and that's being generous). So I started to think about what other thing I could do. I was really good at surfing the internet, but at the end of the evening I really didn't have much to show for all the effort. I was definitely good at watching television (esp. Law & Order in all its forms), but I needed something to "do" while I watched.

So, I decided to take up knitting. Big J was incredibly skeptical. Not that I blame him. I have a history of starting projects and never finishing. The appealing thing about knitting was that I would have the satisfaction of seeing my progress, something I am definitely missing in the dissertation process. And I've knitted before, albeit probably 20 years ago, so I thought it would be easy to reteach myself. And last but not least, it's relatively economical. There are definitely hobbies that are more expensive, and since I am just (re)learning I'm not going to be using outrageously expensive yarns.

So, as I get close to finishing my first project, a baby blanket, I had a random thought -- do I really need a hobby? What is it about having a hobby that is so appealing? And what I really miss is being a catty bitch with my girlfriends. That's a hobby, right?