Alexa Mergen's Blog - Posts Tagged "vocation"
Hobbies & Attention
"A hobby is something that gives but doesn't take." -Austin Kleon, Steal Like an Artist.
Lose yourself in a hobby. If it's not diverting--whether gardening, knitting, running, baking, watching birds--it's not a hobby. A hobby, like a hobby horse, won't take you out the door; it brings you home to yourself.
When I glue bits of paper snipped from junk mail and magazines into journal covers and postcards, I'm so absorbed that I don't think to stop until a twinge in my shoulder plunks me back to my stiffened body. I slip the collages between layers of waxed paper to dry.
When I uncover them a day or two later, I am surprised at what I find, experiencing the same jolt of pleasure as I do when coming across a possible line for a poem in an old journal. But writing is what I do for others; collaging is what I do for me. When I send out a collage postcard, I don't worry about it getting chewed up in the postal service's sorting machine. The ephemeral aspect of the craft frees me from expectation. I can attend to the process of making without becoming attached to the end result and its reception.
A woman from Palm Springs pronounced years ago that writing poems was a hobby for me. I was young and full of self-doubt and her statement made me waver. It took me more than a decade, and the notions of readers, to decide that she was wrong.
Writing poems is enjoyable, surely, but not care-free. Both writing and collaging remove me from the measurements of clock time. But there's an urgency to the writing that the collaging lacks. Each activity requires full attention: the vocation of writing (poems, essays, stories) moves me toward a place that becomes clearer; the hobby of collaging allows me to loiter.
Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative
Lose yourself in a hobby. If it's not diverting--whether gardening, knitting, running, baking, watching birds--it's not a hobby. A hobby, like a hobby horse, won't take you out the door; it brings you home to yourself.
When I glue bits of paper snipped from junk mail and magazines into journal covers and postcards, I'm so absorbed that I don't think to stop until a twinge in my shoulder plunks me back to my stiffened body. I slip the collages between layers of waxed paper to dry.
When I uncover them a day or two later, I am surprised at what I find, experiencing the same jolt of pleasure as I do when coming across a possible line for a poem in an old journal. But writing is what I do for others; collaging is what I do for me. When I send out a collage postcard, I don't worry about it getting chewed up in the postal service's sorting machine. The ephemeral aspect of the craft frees me from expectation. I can attend to the process of making without becoming attached to the end result and its reception.
A woman from Palm Springs pronounced years ago that writing poems was a hobby for me. I was young and full of self-doubt and her statement made me waver. It took me more than a decade, and the notions of readers, to decide that she was wrong.
Writing poems is enjoyable, surely, but not care-free. Both writing and collaging remove me from the measurements of clock time. But there's an urgency to the writing that the collaging lacks. Each activity requires full attention: the vocation of writing (poems, essays, stories) moves me toward a place that becomes clearer; the hobby of collaging allows me to loiter.
Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative
