Hobby Hunters

Lilly had gotten used to the nights blurring into days, the days and weeks blurring into months, and the seconds blurring into eternity. But what she couldn’t handle was the way the words on the pages of her beloved books were blurring in her mind. Her one true escape from the numbing depression, looming dread, and debilitating anxiety had been taken away. And she realized, without that there was nothing left. 

She tried to power through, but grew frustrated as her eyes danced across the words, unable to extract comprehension, never able to make it past the first line of the first paragraph. She tried a different book, but the results were the same. 

After slamming the book down on the side table she sat, feet curled at her side, head resting on her hand, and scanned the room she had been confined to for the last 10 months. “Had it really been 10 months since the stay at home order began?” she pondered. 

Her gaze landed on the window where she could see a mother, two small children, and a dog walking spiritedly along the otherwise quiet street. The larger of the two young ones jump in a gaping pothole with all her might, immediately copied by the smaller child who fell and scraped her knee, causing her to wail. 

Lilly longed for the sound, but it didn’t span the distance. Her house had been quiet for months outside of infrequent visits from her sister. She hadn’t seen her parents since last March, making for a lonely Christmas. All she had were books and work. 

In the beginning, she told herself she was blessed for her health and her ability to continue working from home despite the pandemic. After ten months, she continued to tell herself this. After all, she had no interruption to her income and hadn’t experienced the loss that so many others had, but it grew difficult to feel blessed. Her anger cloaked her half-hearted gratitude whenever the news showed people she deemed “human garbage” venturing out to bars, restaurants, and parties without masks, as if a deadly virus wasn’t wreaking havoc on the nation. Maybe if they had listened, things wouldn’t be so bad right now. Thousands wouldn’t be dying everyday. Maybe if they weren’t so selfish and inconsiderate, she could visit her parents or meet her friends at a bar or go on an actual date. 

There was one virtual date in May. They connected over Zoom and consumed a meal together. It was... nice? How can you tell if there is a spark, if there is attraction, if you can’t be in the same room? They left it at, “let’s try a real date in a few months when this is all over”, not knowing that the confinement was going to continue long beyond a few more months.

The family trekked passed the window and out of sight. All that was left were her thoughts and her dusty, quiet, nicely decorated room. Not wanting to deal with her thoughts (or the dust), she considered watching TV, but knew her attention span was diminutive and shrinking everyday. Taking inspiration from the family, but not heeding the warning of the injured child, she bundled herself in her now rarely used coat and boots and decided to head out for a walk. 

The steps were icy, she hadn’t cleared them since the sleet had fallen a few nights prior, but she carefully and clumsily clutched the railing, nearly making it to the bottom before falling on the last step. Her pants were now soaked, but the determination to go for a walk outweighed her discomfort. 

She made it about ten minutes before the cold convinced her to give up. Once back in her toasty home, she opted immediately for a scalding hot shower. The near-burning sensation that cascaded down her naked body brought vacant comfort. What she really desired was the touch of another human. Not even sex necessarily, she’d take a hug at this point. 

The water pressure dropped and the temperature cooled bringing the shower to a forced end. Not wanting this day to last any longer, she climbed into bed and threw the TV on until she fell asleep.

A new refreshed energy suffused her body when the bright Sunday morning eased her awake. The walk was a failure, but it felt good to try something new and break out of her apathetic routine. She reunited (and reconciled) with her coat and boots and this time was able to make it down her steps successfully. She entered the car she hadn’t driven since she went to the grocery store two weeks before, which took an extra second to start, and drove hopefully to the nearest craft store. 

The presence of other people overwhelmed her. Why were so many people out? The mall parking lot was as full as if it were Christmas season in a year with no pandemic. No wonder it keeps getting worse.

She took a deep breath, put on a fresh mask, and headed into the store that she had hoped was nearly empty. In the craft section, she felt an attraction to the thread aisle where she found some books on cross-stitching and picked out one she found amusing due to its use of vulgar sayings. As she looked for the thread she would need for some of the patterns, a middle aged women with her mask sitting carelessly below her nose walked within a foot of Lilly and started picking out her own thread. 

Lilly jumped back drastically. The women hardly noticed and continued about her browsing. Lilly’s arms were crossed as she stared at the women, shocked by the lack of self-awareness. She wanted to yell, “The mask goes over your nose.” and “Six feet!”, but restrained herself. You never know how an idiot like that might react, and Lilly felt uncomfortable interacting with people in a nice way as it is, given the amount of social skill she knew she had lost in the span of nearly a year. 

Once at home, she put on some music and started her new hobby. At first following the pattern was fun and new and she quickly grew more familiar with the movements of the task. She finished a small one and eyed it proudly, deciding to order a frame for it. Next, she picked out a pattern of a cursing robot and began to weave it into existence. After outlining the shape, she filled it in row by row. Each line was exactly the same as the last and she grew bored, her thoughts creeping back into her conscience. The bones in her fingers began to ache and, after eyeing the vast amount of space left to be filled in, she put it down and never picked it up again, leaving the robot half alive, lovingly deeming it a robot zombie. 

Monday came which provided work to keep her busy, but still she decided to not give up on the challenge to find her next hobby. She ordered an electric keyboard off of the internet and some lesson books to go along with it. Setting it up in her home office, she pulled her desk chair over and hit a single note. Music had always brought her joy, but outside of the year in elementary school where they learned the recorder, she had never really played an instrument. She spent the next few days learning chords and eventually a few basic songs. By the next weekend, her performance of Hot Cross Buns could have headlined any local preschool. 

She decided to try her hand at a more advanced song and began learning the right hand with ease. She felt she had a knack for this! When she moved onto the left hand, her hope untangled itself and fell away. She knew the notes she needed to play, but her fingers where child-sized and couldn’t reach the keys she needed to in time. Every online video showing how to play the tune included a man with giant, football-player sized hands. Frustration reappeared as she cursed the world for being man-friendly and leaving woman-kind behind yet again. Even the women shown playing the song had unusually large hands. She eyed her short stubby fingers and stretched them as wide as they went before finally resigning to revert to watching TV in bed. 

The next morning she awoke to a text from her Zoom date asking if she wanted to meet online again, citing their own loneliness. Lilly regretted answering yes as soon as she sent the reply. She was in no condition to see someone, let alone someone she hardly knew. The depression from her brain had seeped out into her physical appearance - bags under her eyes, pimples on her face, unkempt hair that hadn’t been cut in ten months. Her makeup, which she hadn’t used since their last date, must be crusty and dried up by now. 

The more Lilly was alone, the more she wanted to stay alone, as self-destructive as that was. Her anxiety grew as the time for the Zoom call approached. She finished cooking up her pasta dish and sat in the dining room, leg shaking, her laptop filling the seat across from her at the table. 

They made cordial awkward hellos before sharing the details of the dishes they had prepared. Lilly spoke of her adventures in her new hobbies, a sentiment her date related to. “This meal took me, like, 3 hours to make and I didn’t even mind,” they said. “That’s been one of my new hobbies. Cooking gourmet meals.”

“I wish I could taste your dish. My pasta looks so sad next to your fancy meal.”

They laughed and joked and shared their failed attempts at various ways to pass the time and fight the loneliness. The connection was deeper this time, but they still missed the physical aspect of body chemistry. They joked about their naive notion last time that this virus would go away soon and decided to make a pact that they would try new hobbies together, over Zoom, until they found something for each of them that stuck. 

Once a week, they’d take turns picking a new hobby to try. They started with cooking, which proved to not be Lilly’s strong suit. From there, they tried painting (“Is it a flower?”- “It’s supposed to be a peacock!”), bread making (“I don’t think it’s supposed to be black” - “I don’t think it’s supposed to be flat either”), bike riding (the results had to be reported back and they were not good), and even origami (which they were both decent at, but didn’t feel the need to try again).

They never ended up finding a fit, but Lilly still looked forward to their meeting each week and found that not only was she able to start reading again, but the days started to blur together less and less. They both resigned that maybe their favorite hobby is trying new hobbies every week (dubbing themselves the “hobby hunters”), and vowed to continue this tradition once they were finally able to meet in person, eagerly hoping for that day to come soon, but settling for the fantasy of their first embrace in the meantime.