What's in a Hobby?

What’s in a Hobby?

“I don’t think you understand what a hobby is,” I told Dr. Sharna, as I quickly closed the screen. If we were still meeting in person, I would have grabbed my journal back and held it close to my chest, but our appointments had been virtual since the Spring. 

Dr. Sharna had given me homework to find a hobby, and I did just what she said. I found something to do that would -- keep me busy, that I could do everyday after Zoom school, and that didn’t require me to leave the house. 

“I think you misunderstood me,” she said, leaning toward the screen. “Just because worrying keeps you busy doesn’t mean it’s a hobby.” 

We’ll see about that. “Have you ever tried it?” 

I used to think my parents were smart because they had a lot of books in our apartment. The fact they hired this lady who sat in front of a bed sheet draped from her ceiling made me think those books could've been fake. Dr. Sharna looked like she was in a puppet show. My mom said it was called “working from home.”

Worrying kept me busier than I’d ever been in my life. When I took piano lessons as a hobby the year before, I was only practicing 30 minutes a day. Online watercolor classes in the Spring took one hour; afterward, all I had to show was a soppy brown piece of paper my parents put on the refrigerator next to last year’s calendar. But six months into the pandemic, I was busy all afternoon and often during the night too. 

“Ever since I started worrying my parents wouldn’t hear me if I was in my room sick and upset,” I said, “they’ve started giving me a lot more attention,” 

Before Dr. Sharna made me go on a hobby quest, my favorite thing to do after school was play Xbox at Daniel’s house. Then, my dad said, "a terrible virus is making everyone sick and no one is leaving this house anymore."

“My dad now spends extra time reading to me before I go to bed, and my mom gave me a new iPad. She says it’s to distract me,” I told her proudly.  

“Why did you start worrying about getting sick? Have you been feeling unwell recently?” she asked, tilting her head to the side.

“I asked my parents why ambulances make noises when they’re going down the street. They said it’s so everyone knows someone is very sick. When I learned that, I asked my mom to buy me something so I could make a loud noise if I ever got sick. She got me a foghorn and I keep it under my pillow now, just in case.” 

Our apartment on the Upper West Side was only big enough for one couch in the living room, next to the kitchen table. Then there was my room I shared with Bianca. We had bunk beds. My parents’ room shared a wall with ours. 

I heard all kinds of noises at night -- ambulances, the sounds of people picking through garbage cans to look for prizes, the sounds of my neighbor’s new baby. I couldn’t risk my parents not hearing me cry over that annoying baby’s screams. 

Earlier that month, Dr. Sharna explained that I needed to become curious as a way to find out what interested me, so I asked my dad what hobbies he had. He said he didn’t have time for real hobbies.

“Hobbies are what you do after work, but if you don’t work, you don’t get to have time off,” he told me, looking up from his laptop at our kitchen table. I realized I needed to ask Dr. Sharna if she was going to tell me to get a job too.

After he closed his laptop each day at the kitchen table, he would move to the couch. That’s where he was “unemployed,” he called it. Whenever he got up from the couch, he mostly moved things around the kitchen, put the dishes into the sink, tossed the leftover food into the refrigerator. It was like he was putting together a puzzle and would never finish. What a sad, fake hobby. 

“Have you ever tried worrying?” I asked. “It’s the perfect hobby because you can’t think of anything else while you’re doing it.”

“And does worrying make you feel good?” He paused from his attempt to cram a pack of 100 water bottles into the cabinet, supplies he bought when they announced the lockdown. He’d never shown the slightest interest in one of my hobbies until now. Maybe we could worry together. 

That night while worrying whether worrying made me feel good, I decided to research on my iPad: “why do people worry?”

I found a lot of pictures of beaches with words about praying instead of worrying. Maybe when I’m older and I have more time I’ll pray, like my mom does. For now, my schedule was packed.

One phrase I came across online said, “Worrying is like sitting in a rocking chair. You’ll go back and forth but never get anywhere.” I had never seen a rocking chair. When I looked up an image, the curve at the bottom of the chair reminded me of a ride at the fair I saw in a movie, a pirate ship that would swing back and forth. People were going nowhere, but screaming and having fun. Wow. I would love rocking chairs. 

When people started getting sick and the ambulances got noisier, I overheard on the news that everyone had to stay in one place. My Internet search confirmed I’d picked the perfect hobby since I could feel like I was moving, but now actually going anywhere. I thought my therapist must have been jealous of my fun when she told me I had to cut the worrying to just ten minutes each day, in an exercise called “Worry Pages.” I thought only adults exercised.

Each morning, my mom told me it was Worry Pages time and sent me to my desk with my laptop. “You just do your writing and I’ll worry about the time.” I never thought she was funny before she said that. She didn’t like worrying. I’d overheard her on the phone once say, “Bianca and Max are having trouble but I try not to worry. It only makes my skin look bad.” I guess she had other hobbies she enjoyed more.

By the time I really got going, she was already back in her bedroom on the phone, so I never really had to get out of the rocking chair. 

Worry Pages 

• My neighbor’s pile of boxes grows every day. It’s January. They aren’t Christmas presents. Why did my parents tell me we can’t go near his door for at least two weeks? Do you die when you sleep for two weeks?

• Who will feed the ducks in the pond I used to visit in Central Park now? Can ducks live without food in the winter?

• What would happen if the ambulances’ sirens stopped working? 

The next time Dr. Sharna asked me to share my screen to see my journal, I tried to hide half of it.

“You wrote here that you are worried about school,” she said. I could see my journal on one-half the screen, and her eyes peered over her glasses’ rims in the other half.

“My mom said she doesn’t know when we’ll go back to our school building and I miss seeing my teachers in person,” I said, wishing I could just close the laptop but my mom said I would get in trouble if I did that.  

I was really annoyed that she made me feel so awful. Dr. Sharna got paid to make me cry, and I couldn’t imagine having a job like that. It seemed worse than a doctor who cuts people open and makes them bleed.

“I can understand why you’d feel that way. Have you talked online to any of your classmates?”

Earlier that day, my classmate Sky told me that she’d heard we weren’t going back to school for two years. I asked her if she had any hobbies to fill all that time. She said she didn’t know if she had hobbies but she’d been doing online dance classes. I told her that she should really try worrying instead.

“I’ve been telling my whole class about my new hobby,” I told Dr. Sharna. I could hear her typing faster; it sounded familiar. 

“You know, you’re writing faster now, like I do when I’m worrying. Are you worrying now?” I said.

I really didn’t think someone like Dr. Sharna would listen to a 9-year-old like me, but I think she took my advice.