HOBBIES, OR HOW TO BE BORED PRODUCTIVELY.

The top of my faux Marquetry box

When I was a child, I found it easy to keep occupied.  If I wasn't at school, I would play with dolls, play make-believe and draw prolifically.  Outside I would do headstands, handstands and cartwheels on our expansive lawn.  The rest of the time I was up our jacaranda tree, which had four trunks with numerous forks to perch in and pretend I was in a castle.  I climbed this tree for years, hung from its branches by my arms or legs and never, not once, fell from it.  We had another jacaranda, but it was larger, with a single trunk and not suitable for climbing.  It was too big and, when I did venture up it, I would receive large welts from hairy caterpillars that burned and stung.

As I grew, I started roller skating on our, also, expansive concrete areas.  We had no fences in our neighbourhood and I would skate over to my cousin's house two doors over.  We did build a billycart to ride down the concrete driveway that led to the road by the bay, but it was long, steep and somewhat perilous.  We would also hike through the lantana to the abandoned house next door on the other side of our property.  We never encountered a snake but often ended up with ticks.

My father gave me an old box brownie when I was seven and taught me how to develop film and make prints in black and white.  I gave that up some years later when I was given an instamatic. 

The sad thing about adulthood is that, apart from drawing and photography, most of the activities I undertook are the preserve of children.  We must find other ways to occupy ourselves in our leisure time when we grow up.  Many people turn to creative pursuits, while others challenge their bodies with exercise, hiking, climbing, biking and different sports.

I'm not that into sports, although I love tennis and want to take up golf again.  The trouble is, now that I'm retired, I have to fill every day.  When I became an adult, I discovered that I had a propensity to extreme boredom, to the extent that I can be bored while actually doing something.  Plenty of people can be bored while they are working, but that depends on their job and the same goes for me, but I have to be really involved in what I'm doing to not experience boredom.

As such, over the course of my adult life, I have attempted numerous creative pastimes to fill the void in my leisure time.  Of course, if I am travelling somewhere, I am never bored, but I lack the money these days to go anywhere different often enough.  Only writing and travelling assuage my boredom.

The other day, I was pondering just how many crafts I have tried in order to find my passion.  I believe I started shortly after I married with macrame.  Then I tried string art.  I made a few nice gifts with these but then gave them up.  I also tried my hand at pottery.  It didn't excite me one bit.

After that I completely renovated a house: making curtains, wallpapering, painting, putting laminate on bench tops, making vanity units from scratch (former husband is a dab hand at carpentry, as his father was one, and he taught me the basics).  I tiled a floor and the kitchen wall above the benches.  I should have stuck with renovating, but I wanted a proper job.  Pity, we sold the house for twice what we bought it after one year and I did most of the work as husband was at his job.

Throughout my childhood and adolescence, I had become very good at drawing and portraits in pencil thanks to having a father who was an artist.  In my twenties, in order to get into a college to study Industrial Design, I did two extremely good portraits in pastel as they wanted an example of my artistic ability.  Strangely, they never asked to see them.  I got into the course, but soon dropped out, however, I still treasure the two portraits, one of which I have and the other belongs to my former husband.

Why, you ask, didn't I continue to do more?  Because I am like a Mexican jumping bean and can't settle.  Besides, I wanted to write, and it still took me ten years to get around to writing my first novel.  When I became pregnant, I took classes in watercolour.  I have really never been into painting.  I also tried floristry.  I should include sewing as a hobby, but I have been able to sew since I was a teenager, making some of my own clothes, and this has continued throughout my life.  I also used to knit.  I love knitting but I have jumpers, both bought and made, that are thirty years old because in Queensland, although it can get cold, it does not get thick jumper cold often enough to warrant it.

Through the years I have tried decoupage, folk art and fake marquetry using paint.  This has left me with some nice bits and pieces.

I have made simple loose cushion covers for chair seats and, after that, took the bit between my teeth and reupholstered the seats of my parents' dining chairs.  This required disassembly, new webbing, fabric, cording and a staple gun.  I was very proud of this achievement but don't wish to make it a pastime.  I have eyed my armchair recliner that needs recovering but, having read the mechanics of disassembly, don't want to lose my fingers or wreck my back.  This will have to be a job for a professional.

A reupholstered dining chair

Most recently, since retiring, apart from looking for lucrative, or any, employment, I have tried to learn a new craft so that I can sell something alongside my partner at craft markets.  He has become a masterful leather worker and makes truly beautiful leather handbags for men and women, wallets, and belts.  I feel ashamed that I cannot channel myself to a task with his sheer concentration and all-consuming passion.  He has learned everything he can and will work into the wee hours of the night.

In my quest to sell something beside him at markets, I have tried putting images on candles.  There are two ways to do this.  One way is easy if you can find the right materials, but then the plastic on which the image is printed may give off harmful fumes when the candle burns.  It looks great though.  The second way involves printing the image on tissue paper and attaching it to the candle using a hair dryer or a heat gun to melt it on.  No fume problem here but watch out for your hands under the dryer.  Looks good, but not as good as the other way.  I now have a surplus of white pillar candles.

Next, I learned how to make lampshades.  Not just to recover lampshades, but to make them.  This took some research and Youtubing, and then the more difficult task of finding a certain product to stick the chosen fabric to in order to stiffen it.  It turned out that this wasn't a cheap hobby, but I have two beautiful new lampshades for my exquisite Chinese red, ginger jar shaped lamps bought in Hong Kong forty years ago.  Making lampshades to order, however, may prove problematic, and I'm still thinking about it.

My lampshade

Meantime I have made three little, simple leather frog stuffed toys for my grandchildren.  They managed to damage a cotton one I had that they played with, so I copied it in leather and stuffed it with rice.  I've also sold two at markets, but they are very unwieldy to make.

The list of things people take up as hobbies is endless, and one person's passion is another person's yawn.  The list of hobbies is endless but the ones I haven't tried, I wouldn't want to try as I've thought of every possible one so far and ruled out those that don't appeal to me.

I'm taking a short break from hobby seeking to push my latest novel to literary agents and publishers.  I really need another house to renovate.

END

RIBBIT

THE SELF AND WHERE TO FIND IT.

 

Around seventy years ago, someone I call Me was born.  As far as I'm concerned, I'm still that same person; the same self-aware person that I've been since, well, since I've been aware of myself.  The memories I've stored up for all those years, although they may not be exact and full replicas of events, are still mine and don't vary too much.  I have memories that I'm very fond of, and others that I'm not so fond of.  Nonetheless, they're all there in the melting pot that is my brain.

One of those memories, or titbits of learning that I've picked up along the way, is that the cells of our body die off regularly and are replaced.  Now that's a pretty broad statement and lacks any academic parameters, but it made me think how, if the self is contained in cells, it remains the same when the cells it is made of are constantly regenerated.

Dash it, I decided, this means research and so I began, and, what started out as a simple exercise, became complicated.  Now I don't read full tomes to do research, I like to glean pertinent facts, and, in my research, I discovered that different types of cells have different life cycles.

According to Scientific American: "About a third of our body mass is fluid outside of our cells, such as plasma, plus solids, such as the calcium scaffolding of bones. The remaining two thirds is made up of roughly 30 trillion human cells. About 72 percent of those, by mass, are fat and muscle, which last an average of 12 to 50 years, respectively. But we have far more, tiny cells in our blood, which live only three to 120 days, and lining our gut, which typically live less than a week. Those two groups therefore make up the giant majority of the turnover. About 330 billion cells are replaced daily, equivalent to about 1 percent of all our cells. In 80 to 100 days, 30 trillion will have replenished—the equivalent of a new you."  April 1, 2021

Which is exactly why I wonder why Me hasn't had numerous incarnations, but remains the same old Me.  This meant that I had to study neurons, which I thought is what makes up the custard of our brain.  But it's not just neurons.

Next, from the Dana Foundation, Authors: Elizabeth A. Weaver II, Hilary H. Doyle, August 8, 2019:

"The brain is a mosaic made up of different cell types, each with their own unique properties.  The most common brain cells are neurons and non-neuron cells called glia.  The average adult human brain contains approximately 100 billion neurons, and just as many-if not more- glia.  Although neurons are the most famous brain cells, both neurons and glial cells are necessary for proper brain function."

But that's not all.  The interesting point to note about neurons comes from The Harvard Gazette and a talk given by W.A. Harris and Joshua Sanes, director of the Center for Brain Science at Harvard, May 11, 2022:

"Adult neurons survive a lifetime and remain malleable for several years."

However, "New brain cells are continually produced in the hippocampus and subventricular zone, replenishing these brain regions throughout life."  Fred Gage, PhD, president and professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. 15 April, 2020.

So, enough excerpts taken from respected sources and brilliant minds, from which I've produced a soupcon of pertinent facts regarding cells and their lifespans.  It certainly wouldn't do for a thesis but gives me something to go on.

I wonder how many cells, of whatever kind, make up the self in our brains.  I suspect they must be lifelong neurons, but as yet, no one has pinpointed the region in the brain in which our self hides out.  Perhaps it isn't in one region but is comprised of a number of regions networking with each other.  It is a very odd thing that we cannot figure out the location of our very ego.  I feel that mine is somewhere towards the forefront of my brain in the frontal lobe.  I don't feel like I'm coming from the sides of my brain or the rear but, of course, I may be mistaken.  When you think about it, the retina of the eye sees the world upside down and then the brain turns it right side up for us.  In the same way the self may be in hiding somewhere else in the brain and, somehow, beamed to our frontal lobe.

On a slight, but relevant, detour; I once had a wonderful doctor, a general practitioner.  She studied Medicine in England and then specialized as an anaesthetist.  She eventually moved to Australia and, to practice her specialization, would have had to retrain here so she decided to work as a general practitioner as Australia accepted her level of training for this.  During one of our conversations, I must have mentioned brain surgery, I no longer remember why, and she wrinkled her nose at the thought.  She then said something to the effect that she couldn't have stood being a brain surgeon, that the brain is like custard and, I deduced, this made it a very difficult thing to deal with.

So, somewhere in this custard, the self and all its minions reside.  Basically, I think of it as a chemical and electrical soup, or custard if you will.  In fact, it's a fatty custard, being made up of at least 60 percent fat and fatty acids are crucial to our brain's performance.  No wonder we often get cravings.  We are being driven by an ego that doesn't care how it looks.  It just wants fuel.  It doesn't care about our hips or waist.

Given the brain's custardy nature, it is also no wonder that neurologists and surgeons have to stick electric probes into it to discover what part of it is doing what to which.  It is rather interesting that the part of us that thinks, at this stage, defies our ability to analyze it.  I mean, we're in the thick of it, it is us, but we don't comprehend how it works.

All power to the brain, I say, because, when we do figure it out, we (not me personally) are going to try and copy it or fiddle with it in ways not to do with its health.  Humanity has a bad habit of thinking that its level of progress indicates that it has the ability to interfere with a system way smarter than it is and based on millions of years of evolution.  It's fine if they're trying to save a life; it's not so fine if they're trying to alter things for the sake of it.

It will be a bit like giving your seven-year-old some tools and telling him/her to tinker with your car's engine, find out how it works and try and improve it.  Personally, myself and I will be happy to hide out in the labyrinth of my custard and see out my time before this happens.

END