I Miss When People Had Embarrassing Interests

There's a particular kind of person I miss: someone who can turn an otherwise normal conversation into a forty-minute explanation of fountain-pen nibs. They do not notice that the table has stopped asking questions. They are having the time of their life.

Maybe they collect old transit maps. Maybe they build miniature houses and worry about whether the tiny lamps have the correct wiring. Maybe they know the precise year a particular doll changed its eyebrows. None of this has ever improved their personal brand. That's the beauty of it.

We used to have interests that were difficult to explain at parties. Now, increasingly, we seem to need interests that explain us. The books on the nightstand say we're thoughtful. The running club says we're disciplined. The pottery class says we're grounded. Even our downtime has been asked to write a little character reference.

In September, The Washington Post reported on “hobbymaxxing,” the tendency to approach leisure with the intensity of a second job. There is something funny about taking up six hobbies to escape the exhausting pace of modern life and then assigning each one performance goals. Congratulations on relaxing. Please submit your progress report by Friday.

Of course, people can be sincerely obsessed with things that also look good online. Needlepoint is still needlepoint when someone films it beautifully. An Associated Press report this year described young people finding pleasure and community in old-fashioned, hands-on pursuits, from birdwatching to blacksmithing. The internet can help a very specific person find twelve other very specific people. That is one of its nicer tricks.

But there is a difference between finding your people and auditioning for an audience. The first asks, “Does anyone else care about this?” The second asks, “Will people think I'm interesting for caring about this?” Those are two completely different afternoons.

An August Reddit conversation about supposedly embarrassing hobbies offered a small, lovely inventory: nail polish, jigsaw puzzles, dolls, and a rock collection catalogued by place and date. Not a scientific survey, obviously. Just people being delightfully particular in public. One person's ordinary little obsession is another person's invitation to ask seventeen follow-up questions.

What I find irresistible is the absence of a grand explanation. You don't have to tell me that collecting stamps is a practice in mindfulness. You can simply like stamps. You can love the miniature architecture of their borders, the peculiar little faces, the way a whole country once decided that this flower deserved to travel on envelopes. You are allowed to spend your Saturday arranging them without becoming the founder of anything.

Perhaps that is what has gone missing from the way we talk about leisure: the freedom to be bad at it, excessive about it, or utterly unmarketable. To know every lyric on an album nobody at dinner likes. To own a drawer of ribbons sorted by shade. To have a passionate opinion about the best crossword pencil. To be a little embarrassing, and not immediately turn the embarrassment into a charming, self-aware joke.

I don't want everyone to become less ambitious. I just want to meet more people who will show me a photograph of a very small train and explain, with absolutely no irony, why this one is special. I promise to ask questions. I might even mean them.