dilettante


Since Friday, time has slowed. Right. Down. To the point when each moment lasts an hour or so. I haven't really got a clue, only I was convinced for a whole day that Saturday was Sunday, that dinner was tea and up was down. I am very glad it is a long weekend because that somehow justifies my listlessness and makes inertia permissible. It is exhausting keeping up momentum when days and weeks are only punctuated, not with events, but your own internal clock and your own perception of time.

This week, at least up until Friday, I have been turning my back on duties and taking up as many hobbies as I can. So far, during lockdown I have accumulated 2 or 3 new hobbies. I have always fancied myself as a dilettante, I may possibly be the best dabbler I know. It was something I took great pride in when I was younger, a stubborn belief that I could do anything if 'I just put my mind to it'.  Of course as you age things change and my belief in dabbling has been sorely tested.  I have had a particular bad spate of having to 'get things done' and being so exhausted the only hobby I could muster was binge watching Netflix and sipping wine through a straw.


I am grateful to my particular experience of lockdown for providing me with the time to think about revisiting my gift of dabbling. This week I have been forced to lay aside my established hobby of running due to an old ankle injury. I decided to replace it with another attempt at yoga. I don't know whether it is the lockdown playing havoc with my sense of time but it is the first attempt of yoga where I have felt some of the benefits yogis boast of. There is nothing to do but to accept the moment you are in - and I have managed that for 15 minutes a day. I do have the flexibility of an old withered stick but it hasn't stopped me take big breathes in and out. A function I am particularly grateful for in these times.  So I think the message is, breathe first and the hardened tanned body of a LA yogi next. But what do I know? I only dabble.

I have also managed to dust off my bass guitar and join the thongs of beginners learning the bass line to Seven Nation Army. I imagine if you stack all the beginner bassists playing Seven Nation Army at any given moment, you would get quite a tall, noisy pile. Mostly with the sounds of groaning and complaining about their poor soft finger tips. I say bass line but my over enthusiastic Youtube teacher tells me that there wasn't an official bass line, only a guitar tuned to reach the low notes. The wonderful simplicity of the White Stripes encourages the meekest of us to dream of rockstardom. And I may have awoken my riotgrl dream of playing in my band called:  Mammary Dandruff - I wouldn't splash out on a teeshirt just yet, the endurance needed to harden my girly fingers may outweigh my need to dabble.

I can feel another few projects happening before we are all ready to return to the new normal. Hopefully, I can return to my tried and tested occupation of running and I am pleased to note that my lockdown journal has been fairly consistent. I think next week I will concentrate on taking a photo diary and attempt to find moody, lighting and composition - anything to document this mundane existence and make it worthy by renaming it art. Although, one project may not be enough. I think I need to be really busy - in between the skimming over housework and tussling over home-school, I need to be exhausted.  Anything to keep me too busy to tackle the cooker.


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