A long one, folks. You can read and be bored, or you can skip – doesn’t matter to me. I’m not ranting this time, nothing to rant about; all my ranting was expended last week.
With this post, I start on a topic because something I read “just now” (ha, an hour or two ago) stirred some memories from my childhood. It later progresses into misc thoughts of my adult life…
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I’m reading a blog post from my favorite blogger and she mentions “sewing”, and how she doesn’t enjoy it. She’s a few yrs older than me, which means sewing was something a lot of girls/women did as a hobby (and, sometimes out of necessity). She didn’t mention if she ever enjoyed it, and was considering selling her machine – which leads me to believe she did enjoy it previously.
This lead me to think of my mom, she sewed a lot when I was growing up. At this it was out of necessity, but once she started working and could afford to buy nice clothes, she still sewed – because it was also one of her hobby’s. She didn’t have that many.
Which then lead me to think about my dad. At first, I was about to say, he didn’t have any “hobbies”, but that wouldn’t be quite right. He did; at around his late 30s, early 40s, he somehow got his hands on a set of plans for building a “speed” boat, and spent who knows how long (one summer, two??) building the darn thing, in our backyard and garage. I don’t remember much about it, but since it fit into our garage, it had to have been less than a twenty footer, but longer than 13-14 ft, I would guess. It basically was big enough to hold our family of four. Some small storage under the bow, i.e., it wasn’t a cabin cruiser where a person or two could sleep.
He must have been good at building such things because it floated, and it never sank on us. Lol. We would take it “up north” with us some summers when we went some place and rented a cabin for a week or so. Eventually, I think he tired of it, and it just sat in my grandma’s garage for handful of yrs.
Getting back to his hobbies, other than one more construction project (which I’ll get to, in a moment), he really didn’t have any other hobbies. He once tried hunting, but I think it was only because someone from work or church invited him (and he went out and bought all the hunting stuff, but then never used). Along with the boat, came fishing poles. He had a lot of fishing poles (maybe six, maybe ten??); more than enough for him and his two boys. Fishing might have been something he enjoyed, but I only have one or two memories of us fishing together.
I don’t think he was a reader; he didn’t watch that much sports on tv; ah, that is to say, he wasn’t into baseball nor football; but, because he, and his two sons were tall, we went to a lot of Piston’s basketball games (this was combo hall, way before the “Palace”).
Regarding his second and final construction effort, he finished off our basement – creating a
Tv/family” room, a “sewing” room for his wife (my mom), as well as a third bedroom in the house (my brother was already a teenager and I was about to become one, and I’m guessing the older son wanted some privacy).
This was in the late 60s, early 70s, and both of my parents worked (unusual in that day and age – all the other families on the block had stay-at-home moms). This meant my parents could have easily bought a larger house, but while my dad wanted to, my mom didn’t. So, dad spent at least a summer and maybe a winter(?) finishing the basement. Again, this was out of necessity, but also could have been because he may have enjoyed the “building/constructing” part. I’m not sure if that was the case, or not.
Dad was fifty when he decided to leave his family (and I was 19). He had just started getting to be “interesting” to his second son. I’d bought my first camera the year before when I graduated from high school, and we’d talk a bit about photography (which was becoming a serious hobby of mine at the time). But, he went off with his new GF, and we became estranged after that. So, I really don’t know if he had any hobby’s in his late adult life or not.
I’m almost sure, my mom didn’t have any hobbies in her late adult life either, but could be vastly wrong on this topic. [correct me, if I’m wrong, fellow cousins of mine, please]. Oh, she went to olive organ music concerts, which she loved, and did often, with her sister. I’m going to consider that that was a hobby for her. She liked to garden in her backyard, so I guess she did have a few hobby’s.
Me? Ha – I was into photography as I mentioned before; and before as well as a few years after meeting Gail (my soo to be wife), my “true” hobby was going into work on the weekends, and create code. I could go into the office, and spend half the day writing and testing the programs I was working on for my job). I don’t remember much of the early years of my relationship with Gail, but she was taking classes at the time for her bachelors (while working full time) and I think I just went into work since she was studying all the time.
Eventually, she finished her education, and we got into a position to afford getting ourselves (i.e., me) a boat, and that was my “hobby” for a very, very long time (but, only in the summer, for obvious reasons – we did live in MN, you know).
During this time (but, before we got the boat), we lived in a house with a basement, a very empty basement. All it had was a pool table (which we never used): no other furniture. So, we never spent any time down there. I mention this because, for a long time, I had always wanted to build a model railroad (and, this basement was perfect for it). Even though it was a basement, on one side it had these large windows, so a lot of light came into it. This would have been THE perfect time. But, did I? Nope. I have no excuses, I had the free time, I had the extra spending cash; just either never thought about doing it (during that period in my life, at age 30-35), or, wasn’t confident, or who knows.
Once we got the boat, it also came with a house (and a lake), but it didn’t have a basement; I lie, it had a very, very tiny basement, but only large enough to hold the furnace, and laundry room. Not large enough to even hold the smallest of model railroads, not to mention, since it was built in the 1920s, some parts of the basement ceiling were so low, I had to bend down to prevent hitting my head when transitioning from the basement stairs into the basement itself. So, no, I couldn’t do any model railroading there. Beside, the boat kept calling my name every evening I came home from the office, and again both days of the weekend, so my hobby during this period was boating, and boy, did I ever enjoy it.
I’m going to skip over years after Gail and during the years the first time Rose and I lived together, and just say, I had a couple of opportunities to build a model railroad, both while living with Rose, and during a time when we didn’t live together. It was when we weren’t living together, two to three yrs before I was laid off from Unisys, that I actually started building a “kit” model railroad. It was going to be about 3 feet wide, by six feet long. I got about a third of it done, before life got in the way (with my having been laid off from Unisys), and Rose coming back in my life (with two of her three sons).
At first, I moved the incomplete model railroad out to the garage. Eventually I was able to bring it back inside, once Reece, and his brother moved out. But, it then sat for several years, moving from Reece’s former bedroom, to the tv room/den/library, to the small sun porch, and even to the living room (where I thought if it’s in plain sight, there would be no way I could avoid working on it). However, this was almost at the same time the little girl came roaring into my life. Who had time to futz with model railroading when you had this very special two year old, three yr old, four yr old, always wanting AND getting your constant attention??
But, just like the perfect storm, in 2012, with me finally cracking down to get my masters, I finally had a second perfect storm, starting in 2017, whereupon I gave up on trying to finish the model railroad “layout”; with all of its trackwork (with its associated wiring), and its scenery/ landscaping to do; we would just cut to the chase, and try our hand at building the model railroading buildings themselves (besides, this was what was the interesting aspect of the hobby for me), and thereby skipping the “layout” part; we’ll just put the finished models/buildings on a shelf somewhere. [the problem is, once you’ve built 20, then 30, then 40 of them, you begin to realize you’re going to start running out of space pretty soon.]
Big sigh.
I started talking about hobbies, and, about my parents having hobbies, or not having hobbies. For the longest time, during various period of my life, I would say to myself, how come you don’t have any hobbies?; I mean, reading isn’t a hobby is it? It’s more an activity, right?? Watching tv isn’t a hobby, it’s really a time-wasting activity [but I only watch it to stimulate my brain – lol, haha, pull the other one, brian]; Boating wasn’t really a hobby, is it? It’s just an activity.
I guess I need to look up the exact definition of hobby.
But, I’ll tell you what: while I consider a small portion of my life has been “wasted” (where I didn’t feel I was accomplishing anything, other than stuff at work), or where there was no “enjoyment”, or “fun” on my life; ====>>>> the period when I had my boat, I enjoyed my life; ====>>>> the period when I was finishing my basement in my home I shared with Rose, I was enjoying life; ====>>>> the period when Lailah was in my life such that she came over to babysit me once or twice a week for close to a year, my life was certainly not wasted, and I truly felt excited about living, and every day, looking forward to the next day, and the next one – I had the very best life ever in this world;
and lastly, these last few years where I’ve been using my creative abilities to create these models, with its resulting feelings of accomplishment, and, the feeling of a job well done, and, the stimulatation of being creative, causes one to ponder, after all this time, why did you wait so long to figure out how to make yourself happy??
—— yeah, I’ve either run out of steam here, or have lost my train of thought. Crap, what crappy ending, brian. Sorry. Wish I had a better ending, but I don’t. Besides, I’ve spent at least one (or probably closer to two hours) writing my thoughts down in this post.
I guess a part of me thinks I’ve wasted a portion of my life, but, as I was typing this up, I realize, and continue to realize, how full my life has been.
Did I skip and miss raising a child of my own? Yes, but, I then had the amazing and fantastic opportunity to become, and be Lailah’s GranPaBrian, which makes up for that.
Did my work life and career not become what I always wanted it to be? Sure, but, there were so many times I really enjoyed what I was doing (and, yes, there were other times when I was so very bored).
Same for the personal (love/relationship) life. While my quest to share a life with someone has had its share of issues, I would never trade my two long term relationships for anything else. Both relationships had areas which could have been better, but both gave me lots of happiness while I was in them.
—— there, a much better ending than before.
🤓
