I’m an avid hobbyist, and likely a better term for my condition may be that of a serial hobbyist.
There are not too many things in the world that I’m not interested in and spend time at, whether it’s my classic “normal” hobbies of collecting coins, antique photographs, rocks and minerals, fossils, letters and paraphernalia of soldiers in both World Wars, antique radios, 78-rpm records and their associated players, and so forth.
And then there are the hobbies that are a bit more “out there” that I entertain myself with, such as collecting and preserving real snowflakes, photographing microscopic pond life through a microscope, scanning and archiving 19th-century photographs, insect and arachnid macro-photography, magnet fishing, and likely a few others that I can’t recall as I write this.
I’m guessing it all started when I was very young, in early grade school. I was always bringing home little trinkets after school, usually found in the school yard or on my walk home, and many times they were small colourful rocks, and if I was especially lucky; a fossil seashell found amongst gravel.
You could tell when laundry was being washed in our house as one of my treasures would escape the mandatory pre-wash pocket inspections by my mother before she loaded up the machine, and the subsequent rattling of rocks against the metal sides would soon reverberate through the house notifying her that she had missed one or two of my precious stones.
I’m in my early fifties now, and I must confess, I still do it.
And I still find that field collecting is as exciting now as it was for me when I was a little boy.
Whenever I’m at a lakeside or seashore I’m always beachcombing like an obsessed crow searching out shiny objects that could be found and taken back to my nest where all the other ones are proudly kept.
Over the years I’ve found some fascinating things while on beach strolls (well, fascinating to me, anyway).
There was that one time in Jamaica on a beach when I picked up a broken shard of old English bone china with beautiful patterns on it. It appeared to be naval in nature, so of course it had to be from the British Navy in the 1700s, or even better, a pirate ship!
Ten-year-old me would have been jumping for joy.
There was the shark tooth in Cuba, which has been the only one I’ve ever found on my countless beach walks.
I also have a mason jar filled with early pottery bits and china shards found on the shores of Newfoundland.
Then there’s the pot shard that caught my eye while walking through an excavation site in Egypt. When I picked it up, my thumb slipped perfectly into an ancient deep thumbprint on the bottom of the piece. The man’s thumb had pressed into the soft clay as he was shaping the pot prior to firing it in a kiln more than two thousand years ago. What a thrill that find was.
Experiencing that instant connection to another person in the distant past is one of the great moments of field collecting.
The first time that I experienced that beautifully humbling connection with the ancient world was when I was around 10 years old, and my uncle gave me an indigenous-made stone hide scraper that was found on a family farm decades before I was born.
I of course still have it and I’m right now holding it in my hand just as the person who had finished knapping it likely had done so 8,000 to 10,000 years ago, a timeline confirmed by a member of the Royal Ontario Museum. It still gives me goosebumps.
Not all things that I have found and collected are limited to inanimate objects. I once collected seaweed in a small jar and brought it home from Cuba to look at under my lab microscope. Yes, I have a home lab. Who doesn’t?
Hidden among the plant material was a strange microscopic organism called a tardigrade, or as it is more popularly known as, a water bear.
This was no ordinary water bear though. This one was strange and had horn-like appendages sticking out of its head area, which is highly unusual. After sending video of it to an expert, it was almost certainly a new species. Sadly, I could not find another one that could be sent to a university to be confirmed by DNA analysis.
My 15-minutes of scientific fame was dashed, or at least delayed for now until I return to Cuba, and what an exciting journey and accomplishment all done in my free time!
So, why do I do all of this and why is it important to have a hobby or many hobbies?
Free time of course is at a premium nowadays but finding that time could help make your life a whole lot better and is worth the effort.
A 2017 article in Psychology Today, titled “How hobbies impact your head and your heart,” describes the many health benefits of being a regularly active hobbyist.
The author, Dr. Srini Pallay, writes that spending at least one hour per day at your hobby may protect your brain from dementia later in life, and helps with lower blood pressure brought on by engaging in a leisurely and enjoyable activity.
I can certainly get behind that kind of thinking.
And I know I’m not the only one.
My friend Ryan Rowell, a photographer of note in Barrie, far eclipses my effort as a multi-hobbyist.
We discussed this topic recently and he said “I collect hobbies if you want any. There is RC boats, trucks and cars, metal detecting, rock hunting, rock climbing and spelunking, woodworking, book making, 3D printing, bee keeping, archery, fishing, air rifle shooting, sewing, metalsmithing with gold or silver, sketching, and writing”.
I wanted to know why he was involved in so many wide-ranging activities, as I am.
“It’s my ADHD that causes me to find new things. Novelty and intrigue hold my attention well”, Rowell said, and then added “I forgot, I’m also a licensed ham radio operator, too.”
Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD.
Of course!
I fit right there into that category, and I always have in one form or another, along with bouts of anxiety where I need to focus my attention onto something other than what I’m worrying about at the time, such as writing deadlines.
A hobby, “It does a body good”, as the classic 1980s milk television ads go.
Now go and do something fun.
Kevin Lamb is a Barrie-based freelance photojournalist, reporter and longtime contributor to BarrieToday.
