A Life of Stale Flour

They say variety is the spice of life.

If that’s true, then my life was as flavorful as a bag of stale flour. Keyword- was. I used to live my life from day to day. I’d wake up, go to work, only to go home and use that money on delivery orders while my eyes gloss over too many episodes of The Office. God, how time went by, days blurring into days, weeks blurring into weeks, henceforth and so on. 

But I’m not that kind of person anymore. All it took was a meeting with Jenny from HR. My coworkers were worried about me. She mentioned the word apathy. It stuck in my brain like a half chewed gummy bear sticks in the gaps of your teeth. And no matter how much you scrape, you still feel like you have some left.

I gave her a half smile, told her I’d work on it, took a ground-scraping rise from my chair and left the room. Looking back, she probably wanted to have a grander discussion, and possibly about how it’s affecting my work in the company, but I wasn’t in the mood. I had too much apathy to do that. 

Apathy.

Apathy, apathy, apathy. 

The entire bus ride home, that word was louder than the cold air whistling through the seams in the windows. I mean, I wasn’t mad, because she’s right. Lately I haven’t been motivated or interested in anything except whether Dwight and Angela work out their problems. Apathy.

I wish I could say I changed that night, but it took me a couple weeks before the word got too loud, before the gummy bear in my mouth got too sour. I had to do something different. 

Then, one night I changed. Instead of spending more money on my double-stuffed pizza, or chicken and rice burritos, I stopped at the grocery store in an instant sting of inspiration. I was going to cook. But I didn’t cook that night, no no. I created. Coming home with a bag full of ingredients, I followed the recipe I had set in my mind. Hallowing the peppers, I felt my blood rush in a way I hadn’t felt before. My hands seemed to be moving on their own as they dashed in spices and ingredients the recipe hadn’t even called for. Inspiration carried my hands as I stuffed the peppers and towed them into the oven. Together, Inspiration and I created. My head felt a little dizzy as I plated my masterpiece. That night, I lived for the first time in a long time.

I stopped at the grocery store the night after, set out to live my new life as a cook; a foodie, the one who knew exactly what flavors went with what, the one people raved about their home parties because “their homemade frittatas are just oh-so-good”. I wanted to venture into the meat department. Maybe I’d cook up a seasoned steak, a simple burger, anything that revived that spark I felt the night before.

Nothing did.

I ended up making a cheeseburger. Burnt patty, unflavored bun, cheese burger. I thought I was ready, I set out all the ingredients on my counter, I took in that big breathful of air, allowing that flow of passion to enter my soul and guide my hands through my cooking. But the air I breathed felt stuffy, and everything inside me plummeted as I scraped old ketchup onto the buns. My masterpiece. Voila. 

What did happen however, was miraculous. I still had some veggies left from the night before, from that one passionate night. I eyed my blender, still fresh in it’s cardboard box on the corner of my counter. The passion flew back into me and I felt my blood rush with excitement. Smoothies! Of course! I can be a master mixologist. I started that new passion, and for the next week I made a variety of smoothies, milkshakes, juices. I went even further - cocktails, crafted beers, and (after extensive research) began the process of creating moonshine. I felt like an inventor of liquids. Call me Poseidon.

But once again, the shimmer and glimmer in my eyes died as I looked at my blender and the fifteen different fruits I had ripening in a bowl. Dear God, what am I doing? Was I going insane?

I packed the blender back up and shoved it aside.

I needed my next high, my next flurry of excitement as I found a new hobby to pursue. And listen, I’m self-aware. I began to realize what I was doing, never sticking to a newfound passion. But at the time I was too busy carving ducks out of soap, painting and sketching and drawing and coloring, registering for metalworking and glass blowing classes. I practiced singing, piano, guitar, drums (well- bongos). I took up Spanish, French, Japanese, German, learning the pleases and thank yous before venturing onto my next craft. 

None of these ventures lasted longer than I week, I presume. The longest I kept up with was playing manicurist- something I found I had a peculiar knack in. And it was after I put down the nail file for the last time that I realized. I had probably gone through fifty plus different tasks all within the span of three months. I wasn’t sticking to anything. That word apathy sprung forward out of the shadows like a fox jumping on a rabbit. I’ll never find anything. I have no place in life.

That night was restless and the morning after, looking in the mirror, rinsing cold water on my face, I gained a sort of defiance. You know what, who cares? Screw you Jenny. So what if I can’t find something I like. I liked finding new things to like. I enjoy switching hobbies. I guess….

It hit me.

My hobby. My joy in life. What I knew would relieve that accursed ‘A’ word from my brain forever.

My hobby was finding new hobbies.

I broke out in a smile, which let the harsh laugh creeping up my throat find it’s escape. My hobby is finding hobbies! Hobbies are my hobbies!

That Saturday, I began working on my hobby, my one true hobby. I scoured the internet. Pinterest and Wikipedia became my best friends that day. I worked on a list. I called it my ‘Flour Recipe’. I was going to craft up the most flavorful, spice-induced life I could imagine. My ‘flour recipe’ consisted of anything you could imagine- from potting flowers to sailing waters to voodoo making to beetle fighting.

Those years were marvelous. I guess you’d call them the glory years… Or is it golden years? Either way, I had the most fun I’ve ever had. I would start my days off looking at my list, finding something new that called to me when the last activity died its final spark. Sometimes I’d go in order of the list, sometimes I’d roll a pair of dice, and heck, sometimes I chose whichever was closest to a coffee stain. That list was my life, and my life was in that list.

But as the years passed, and as my skin began spotting its signs of age, my list dwindled. After learning and living and exploring, from hiking mountains to stone skipping at frozen lakes, I was finding less and less things to do. I was down to the wires, left with the procrastinated hobbies. I could feel my blood run colder and colder every time I looked to see another check on the list, another task already done and passed, it’s momentum gone forever. I tried repeating old tasks. I went back to cooking- the venture that started this all. But once the spark left my eyes it could never return. 

I finished off my glorious escapades with tree shaping, lollypop tasting, even something called extreme ironing (Seriously, look it up). As my list fell to the last few, I looked towards the one hobby I had saved for last. Fire starting. I watched the video and learned the techniques, bought the proper materials, and started fires from scratch. I started small, little bonfires in my driveway, and worked my way up. Once I felt confident, I went camping (a hobby I had surpassed years ago) at one of my favorite destination spots (a spot where I did my rock collecting, rebuilt some of my chakras, and took up bird watching) and lit a fire. It was a beautiful fire, and all the passion I had built up for this hobby went into it. I knew as the flames died down, so would my love for fire-building, but at this time the flames were lively and grand. I took my famed list in my hands, the fire twinkled and illuminated my glossy eyes, and threw the list in. I watched as the flames tore at its corners, blackened them at the same time as it blackened my heart. I was watching my entire life burn away in the fire. Everything I had lived for and done in the last few years, now over. On fire. Turned to ashes. Gone.

I had no idea what was to come of my life next.

Just as the last of my flour recipe was turning into an ‘ash recipe’, an unexpected wind blew through the trees. I had been so busy watching my life burn up, I didn’t even notice the flames now growing nearly the height I stood at. The wind blew flickering remnants over as it graced the arm of some nearby shrubbery.

I tried grabbing some blankets, some of the water bottles I packed away with me, but the fire kept dancing it’s groove into the dark green pines. It danced the tango and climbed up, soon cheating on the bush with a spindly, towering spruce tree. The fire climbed and climbed, burned away at the tall tree. I stared up at it, mostly in shock at what I had just destroyed. But also, a little in awe at what I had just created. 

There, as I stood, petrified and frozen, my silhouette now darkened by the tall tree housed in flames, I laughed. I laughed because the damndest thought had just dropped on my brain, as if one of the floating embers carried an idea and singed its way through my mind. There are more hobbies out there.

That’s it. That’s it! I hadn’t done everything, only the normal hobbies, the sane hobbies. There were more, and it started with pyromancy. As that tree flew into fire, I knew I could create more. I started small fires around neighborhoods, usually in open public trash cans. Once I lit a mailbox on fire. Then, a house. It was abandoned, on the corner of an empty street. Nobody would get hurt, and I figured it’d be a great way to say goodbye to this new hobby.

And hello to the next. I went to the store the next day to begin. I picked up small, cheap items- and stealthily stored them in my pockets before leaving. I worked my way through aisles, shoplifting more and more expensive things. I almost got caught once or twice, but with all the cameras, I realized hardly anyone attempts to pick things off shelves anymore. Nobody knows that nobody watches those cameras though.

Shoplifting soon turned to pickpocketing, which soon turned into muggings (not my proudest, I’ll be honest), which evolved into robberies. 

I should stop for a second. You have to understand. My intention wasn’t to hurt anyone. I didn’t find joy out of being a criminal, and it wasn’t like an F YOU! To the system. It was simply my continuation of living. Hobbies were the only thing that I found worthwhile in my life. When I ran through them all, I genuinely thought my life was over. Genuinely. As in, I didn’t buy groceries that week- genuine. So when I found something I could grasp onto, something new, another light to fill my eyes with life before it vanishes, I had to grab onto it. And that’s what led into last night. 

I had gone through my run of, let’s say “spicier” hobbies. From home invasions to underground pokerships, I was once again running out of things on my ‘list’. My… paprika list. So when it came down to closing time, I had made my decision. I was ready for the ultimate “hobby”, the spiciest fleck out of the whole spice jar. The ‘M’ word. 

I guess you could argue that’s not really a hobby, but in my mind anything could turn into a hobby. And for some people, some few socio/psychopathic individuals, it was technically a hobby. Again, at this point I’m so far down the spice jar I can no longer see light. It was hard to breath and I was desperate for my next venture. So I finally settled on the person.

I made sure it was someone, erhm, I didn’t verify as redeemable. Someone I met in the pokerships, someone who told us in private terrible things he did (he was threatening us to fold, but unlike his hand, I know the things he was telling us weren’t lies. If he was bluffing he would begin dry swallowing- his tell). This was someone who founds hobbies in things I would never allow myself to reach. No matter how far down the spice jar I fell, I’d rather suffocate than stoop to his levels. 

Plus, he had no friends nor family, no one to miss him. I knew where he lived and what he had done, so he was an easy target. 

So, detective, as I sit across from you while you read this letter, one that I hope I was brave enough to walk through those doors and hand you- I wish to make this my confession. I was the individual who enacted whatever horrors you found through those doors last night, and I am the one to blame for. I write this letter in hopes of explaining why I did what I had done. What sort of dark, desperate path my life took to lead me to the tainted ‘M’ word. I don’t think you’ll understand, and I wish I knew what kind of face I’ll be reading from you as your eyes near the end of this letter. But that is why I did it, and I’m ready to plead guilty to all crimes. I confess.

And if I may add one last thing to this note, detective.

I'm excited to see what new hobbies imprisonment will bring me.