The Hobby Question
What do I want my Saturdays to look like for the next twenty years?
Last Tuesday, around three in the afternoon, I caught myself staring at a wall in our office at Horizon Hobby. Nothing was on it. I was just staring. The thought arrived clean and unwelcome: I don’t really have a thing.
Not a thing I do. Not a thing that’s really mine.
I have fifteen years in at Horizon. I am, by trade and paycheck, in the hobby business. Planes, helis, cars, trucks, boats. Every day, I walk past gear that thousands of people genuinely love. Every day I walk past it. I have never flown a beginner plane, and I have zero desire to do so. I have built a beginner truck kit with instructions (and lots of help) to test it for someone like me who has never built a vehicle before. It was fun, but I could never have done it on my own. I have never raced, except during a company event. It just isn’t my thing, even though it is the thing for thousands of enthusiasts.
So here we are. Fifty-something. Still healthy enough to start something. Smart enough to know that “hobby” is a stand-in for a bigger question: what do I want my Saturdays to look like for the next twenty years?
I gave it some thought this week and made a list of some potential fits.
Running was first because running was first, period. I ran cross country at Illinois College. First four-letter winner the program ever had. Team captain senior year. There’s a part of me that still hears Coach Rosenberg’s voice right before finding the starting line, still feels the October chill on my arms, still thinks of my body as something that can traverse more than a few miles at a decent clip without complaint.
That body is gone. The knees won’t have it. The ankles won’t have it. I tried a comeback half a dozen summers ago, just trying to jog a bit, and I limped to work. That door closed gently on my aspirations for a return to running.
I miss it. I won’t pretend I don’t. I’m also not going to pretend that adding pain to my week qualifies as a hobby.
Although I dismissed it pretty quickly, I had to at least consider the radio control hobby seriously. I sit thirty feet from the engineers who design this stuff. I could walk down to the warehouse right now, and somebody would set me up with a starter rig and walk me through it on lunch. The barrier is exactly zero.
And yet, after all this time, I have never once felt the pull. If a hobby is going to take hold, it has to come from within the person, not from convenience. Otherwise, everyone who works at a brewery would be a homebrewer. I do kind of wonder what that ratio actually is?
Vinyl was next. I started a couple of years ago. Picked up a couple of records to add to my high school and college collection. A few I genuinely loved that I did not own. The math gets bleak fast, though. Thirty bucks for an album I already own on streaming seems not quite worth it. Plus, I’d want a turntable that’s nicer than the one I currently own, then the slow creep of “maybe I should look into better speakers.” The payoff is real but small. The cost is real and not small. The activity itself is mostly sitting and listening, which I already do. There is a joy in holding a vinyl record, but I’m just not that big of a collector.
The guitar tempted me. Guitar still tempts me. There’s a romance to it I can’t shake. The image of myself ten years from now, sitting on a back porch and playing something my wife would want to hear. That’s appealing. Guitar is indoor, though. Guitar is solitary. Guitar takes a long time to get any good at, and I’m not at a stage in life where I can promise an hour a day to anything.
So. Golf.
Golf checks every box I didn’t know I was building a list for. It’s outside, which my body and my head both need. It’s exercise without being punishing, and social without being draining. My Dad plays. My daughter already plays better than I do, a state of affairs I find both humbling and wonderful. The idea of standing on a tee box with both of them on a Saturday morning in July, with the course peaceful and quiet, is a real reason to be there together. For me, it’s the whole point of having a hobby.
Here’s an amusing aspect of choosing golf... I already have clubs. They were a gift decades ago from somebody who said, “You’ll use these eventually,” with the calm certainty of someone who knew. The bag has been in the garage a long time. The clubs are a little worse for wear, but they’re mine, and I’m pretty sure they work.
So, what do I actually need before I can play? Less than I thought.
A glove. Probably two, so one’s drying out while the other’s on my hand. A dozen balls I won’t cry over losing. (I will lose them. I’m at peace with this.) Tees. A divot tool. Spikeless shoes I can wear from the car to the cart without changing. A few range buckets before I subject any other human being to me on a course. Maybe a few goes on the putting green. Lastly, a few lessons to make sure my natural swing and stance won’t leave me wincing after nine holes, and who could probably fix all the bad stuff.
That’s the entire list. A few hundred dollars all in. Less if I’m patient about the shoes.
I don’t have a summer plan, but I should at least go to the driving range once or twice a week for a month. Just the range. There’s no pretending I’m ready for a course. Next, start playing nine holes on weeknights when the course empties out around six. Once I feel comfortable, I’ll see if I can put a real round together without losing my mind on the back nine. By the end of the summer, the goal is one round with my Dad and my daughter, all three of us walking and playing the same tees. If that round happens, the summer is a success. The score on the card doesn’t matter.
I think the thing I needed was permission to pick something that doesn’t have to become a personality. I don’t need to be a “Golf Guy.” I just need somewhere to put my Saturday mornings that isn’t the couch.
The clubs have been cleaned and are currently in my trunk. The glove I’ll grab on the way home tomorrow. Scheduling the lessons is the next logical step.
I’m anxious and excited at the same time. That’s probably a good thing,
Be seeing you.
Hello Stranger
I finished a screenplay. Not this week, exactly. The file says draft four, so it’s been a long road. But this is the week I’m saying it out loud.
Of course, by the time you read this, I might be on draft five. I keep trying to shape the marble into a statue. What’s the line? Art is never finished, only abandoned.
It’s called Hello Stranger. A guy who runs a comic shop in a small town gets one unexpected night with the girl he never got over, eleven years later. That’s all I’ll give you here. It’s based on a short story I wrote a long time ago, which I felt might be better suited as a movie.
Maybe it becomes something, maybe it just lives on my hard drive. Right now, it exists, which is a pretty great feeling. I’m rather proud of it.
What’s next? I really don’t know.
Stojakovic stays
For a few weeks there, I checked my phone like a worried parent. Andrej Stojakovic had entered the NBA Draft, gone to the combine in Chicago, and told everyone he was “both feet in.” That phrase does something to an Illinois fan. It sits right in the chest.
Then, on Wednesday, he pulled out. He’s coming back to Champaign.
The combine actually went well for him. He led every prospect in the max vertical at 41.5 inches, which is the kind of number that makes you sit up straight. But the draft boards had him as a late second-round guy, and that math never adds up to leaving early. especially in the NIL era. So he’s staying.
The 6’ 7” frame and the athleticism are already there. The rest of the game isn’t finished yet, and now he gets another year to build it. Shoot a million threes, get better, and go in the first round in 2027. That’s the bet, and it’s the right one.
The roster is locked and loaded.
Robert Rosenthal said it best: “Elite Eight is the bar. Final Four is the expectation. National title is the aspiration.”
What can a person learn in 10 minutes that will be useful for life?
This Reddit thread asks what a person can learn in 10 minutes that will be useful for life, and the top-voted answer is using your hand span, thumb to pinky, as a built-in measuring tool. Mine is 7 inches, which I will never forget now.
The other favorites in the thread are worth sharing for your relationships and your nervous system: "Never explain yourself to people committed to misunderstanding you." Before responding in an argument, scan your body and take a slow nasal breath to notice fight or flight before you speak. Then speak calmly. "'No, I can't' is a full sentence. You don't owe anyone a 10-minute TED Talk about why."
Caught in Joy
I listen to a lot of YouTube at work. The moment I clicked through to the Caught In Joy YouTube channel, I knew I was going to love it. The description:
Over 80 albums designed to focus, flow and reset. Instrumental electronic music for you brain to wander.
And from the website:
Caught In Joy (Karol Pokojowczyk) is a multi-instrumentalist based in Florida, passionately dedicated to live composing, hardware synthesizers, and tape recording - a completely independent music project. I strive to create four albums and visual performances every month, entirely by myself.
I started my professional life as a software engineer and later became a serial entrepreneur, with a few successes along the way. After more than 30 years of working, I saved enough to fund my dream: building a home studio where I could finally focus fully on music.
This album is my current favorite: Mercury - full album (Tangerine Dream meets Pink Floyd and Boards of Canada)
