Top Ten Tuesday: Non-Bookish Hobbies

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.

Uh, I don’t really have a whole lot of non-bookish hobbies? When I’m not reading or writing, I’m generally at work or sitting on the couch watching TV with my wife or surfing my phone. I used to do a lot more (like um, work out), but let’s just say that the pandemic has put a huge damper on my creativity.

But I do some things that are kinda not hobbies but frequent enough that they kinda are? Sure.

Anywho, these are the highlights. There have been a lot of failures throughout the way!

Also: today is election day in the US, and I am low-key freaking out. Luckily I’m scheduling out all of my posts so if the worst but expected happens, my posts will continue on until I can get into the right headspace to write again.

Baking

When I was little I used to bake a lot. And then I stopped. And then the pandemic happened, and I started to bake a little. First cream cheese snickerdoodles, then cinnamon knots, then cinnamon rolls, and then I tried my hand at breads (brioche and no-knead artisan) and then I did some galettes and that let to me trying my hand at making my own pie crust. And then I kinda petered out but now I want to make some more no-knead bread, because that shit is delicious. No, I have not tried sourdough, because that whole starter thing is scary.

Jewelry Making

I do dabble in a bit of jewelry making, although I haven’t made as much in the past couple of years. I’m not the best, but I have made some statement necklaces that I really enjoy wearing every so often.

However, my jewelry taste is a little more understated (as in, I wear stud earrings and my wedding ring and that’s it) than my abilities to make things, so I toned it down when I realized that I wasn’t wearing even a fraction of what I was making, and I’m not confident enough in my abilities (or technical skill) to even want to try selling it.

But if I’m feeling tired or run down, I wear my clunky fake-coral necklace as a way to distract from the circles under my eyes. Or my cute fake-stone steampunky necklace that always gets a lot of compliments (because it looks cool as hell).

Gardening

Aside from when I was living in Chicago, I have pretty much always had plants. If I had a balcony or outside, then I have plants. And this summer was the first one in our house (instead of a rental), we planted a garden (in pots) and did a lot of work in the yard to make it really bloom.

My wife has a bit of a green thumb, and I can manage to make things live if they are outside (my poor houseplants all slowly die away under my neglect and panic-watering), so this year we planted broccoli, cauliflower, squash and zucchini.

Unfortunately the broccoli shot up before we harvested and the cauliflower died of mold just before we were going to pick it, but we had some fantastic zucchini and squash, and I learned a lot about what to not do next year. Right now I’m growing spinach (it is not doing well) and green beans (I got some but I think I planted too closely).

Plus I planted zinnia seeds and got mega behemoth zinnias, which was pretty cool. And my wife planted a bunch of gladiolas that came up in spades in the spring and made me look like a master gardener (ha, no) when I kept bringing bunches and bunches into work.

Unfortunately we are moving sometime next summer, and I don’t know where we are going to end up. But I hope that we have a balcony if it’s an apartment or a small backyard, because I really want to continue to plant flowers and grow vegetables and basically be just a little more self-sufficient, because right now we are definitely not. I want to let that little prepper buried within me out!

I did have some indoor plants that were doing great, but then we pulled out this asshole kitten from the bumper of my car back in May and he is now seven months old and the little shitstain is everywhere (we love him but he is a monster). At least he and the dog are besties, even if I have to put all my indoor plants way up high where he can’t reach (yet).

Photography

I used to really, really be into amateur photography. And then I stopped. Mainly because we stopped traveling as much, but also because where we live it’s just not that inspiring for me? I want to go home to Oregon where everything (or maybe my rose-tinted glasses) is beautiful and lovely.

DIY Projects

Okay, this one is more my wife since she’s the one who does a lot of the big projects, and perhaps this is more about being a homeowner than actually being DIY-y, but we have done a lot of cool things around the house. We painted accent walls on our fireplace, bedroom and in my office, and then built built-in bookshelves along the wall.

They’re a little tippy but they work and hold up all of my books. And my wife has dedicated herself to making the outside of the house fantastic—planting plants, laying down stone lining in the garden beds, redoing the path to our house, staining the fence (and getting someone to build a fence), planting trees and a whole bunch of other things.

Okay, so my wife does the DIY stuff. I just point out what I want and where I want it.

What are your non-bookish hobbies?