Hobbies

Five more lectures to go.  On solids and X-ray crystallography. A short tour through nuclear chemistry, aware that these 100 or so minutes might be all they get on the topic in their chemistry degree. Memories of my own undergraduate training surface, where we got to use the nuclear reactor to do neutron activation analysis of milk samples. Can I find a photo of the reactor to show them?

Chatting with a colleague in the hall about my plans to write: "It's good to have a hobby," he offers. I bristle a bit.  I'm not sure that I would classify my writing under "hobbies." Sketching is a hobby, knitting is a hobby, fly fishing is a hobby. (Which two of these do I do?) A hobby feels too casual a classification, bearing a frisson of frivolousness. Writing for me carries weight, sometimes serious weight. So is it a job? an avocation? a vocation?

What does the OED have to say? A hobby is "An activity or interest pursued regularly in one's leisure time for pleasure." Or an avocation:  "an activity or line of work for which one has special talent or affinity; one's calling." Vocation, it  tells me,  derives from a summoning.

Writing is (mostly) a pleasure for me. Some of it is done in my "off-hours" from my paid job. This blog is probably a hobby. Regardless of the box I might drop it into, my writing is an integral part of who I am. The words call, and I cannot help but pick them up and start dragging them into place.