I Need A Hobby
This went out yesterday as issue 5 of The Angelo Report, a weekly newsletter published every Sunday afternoon.
Every time the Olympics or the World Cup or whatever major global sporting event come around, I keep telling myself that I should follow it and learn more about whatever event I’m watching. Same with hockey season. I live in Montreal, I’m supposed to love the sport, right?
But I just... don’t. I really don’t. I like playing sports, sure, and I'm impressed by the jocknerdery that folks can show around their fave teams or players or whatever. The stats! The probabilities! The fantasy leagues! It's cool, probably!
(Aside: Similarly, I want to love video games. My gaming days go back to the Atari 2600. I have a SNES reissue sitting on my desk. But I just... ugh, I just can't sit and play whatever the hot new game is for hours.)
Why am I telling you this? I guess it's because not being into stuff can sometimes make me feel like a bit of an outsider. I can't make smalltalk on how our local team is doing. I don't go to the local sports bar to watch the matches and enjoy the energy of strangers. It can feel a bit isolating at times, in an era where third places are disappearing and we're all becoming more and more isolated from each other. And after working from home for over seven years, man, I'm feeling it.
It's not that I want to suddenly care about sports so that I can make new friends. It's just something I was thinking about, while watching folks participate in an amateur softball league earlier this week. It's nice to have a connection outside of work and home to people in general and strangers specifically. It makes us pay attention to universal human struggles, and it forces us to develop patience with people.
Smalltalk about sports isn't the point here, exactly. It's about the little things that bring people together.
Anyways, here’s a photo of Merlin being a big cute dork. I hope you have a great week.
Around The Web
This week, the two sides of self-care:
- Joan Westenberg asks, When Does Self-Care Become Narcissism: “When buying a $10 juice gets put on the same pedestal as setting healthy boundaries or cultivating meaningful relationships, we're in trouble. We're confusing temporary feel-good moments with genuine well-being, and in the process, we're often neglecting the deeper work that true self-care requires.”
- This HealthyGamerGG video hit hard on why it’s so hard to be consistent: every day we basically wake up as a new person, unique from who were yesterday and who we’ll be tomorrow, so it’s easy for us to prioritize fun/safety over hard work — so we punt it off to tomorrow’s version of us, who is a stranger. The kicker? Developing aelf-compassion means you actually care about tomorrow-you, so you do what you can to help them succeed instead of prioritizing your own comfort today.
Thought Of The Week
I’ve developed this behaviour of trying to help people with whom I have meaningful relationships, often to my own detriment (because I’m not great about setting boundaries). And worse, even my “help” isn’t always, you know… helpful — it’s often more about not wanting them to feel bad in some way.
This isn’t a good thing — it leads to decisions that don’t make a situation better for anyone. Not really, anyhow.
So this week’s thought is something my therapist shared with me. Maybe it’ll resonate with you, too:
Ask yourself, how much of this is about strengthening a relationship, versus saving someone from working through their own emotions?
Well, shit. I guess I need a new hobby now. Are the Olympics still on?