My interpretation of “find pleasure in” involves doing things that do not make me scream, cuss, break things, and hate everyone who is stupid enough to talk to me. That means all hobbies are out.

It also doesn’t help that when people start listing off possible hobbies my first thought is “What is the arm load like? Nope.” I am at mass capacity on arm load. I truly can’t pick up hobbies like knitting or crochet at this point. I would fully cripple myself in a year.

My arms burn. Right now. All the time. Sometimes the pain a lot worse. I was dumb in November again. I still don’t have a workable ergonomic set up. I had one that kind of sort of worked only it didn’t. So yeah. That will take money to fix. I just… this whole year sucks for money.

When I paint it is better if no one is in the room with me. If someone is near me while I paint it isn’t going to be very pleasant for both of us. The motherfucking piece of shit might breathe at the wrong time and then I will turn around and scream and scream and scream because how fucking dare they distract me.

Painting my house has been an adventure. I can’t scream at the kids like that. But painting is horrible and stressful so I try to only paint while they are able to be distracted doing something else. I curse under my breath. I sound really bad.

Why do I work all the time? Because I get a sense of satisfaction from it. I do have “hobbies” given that I don’t do anything for pay. Everything I do is a hobby. I work all day long. None of my hobbies are “relaxing”.

When I sit down to read a book as often as not it is dense, difficult to read, and kind of uncomfortable. I read a lot of things that cause me psychological distress because I need the information contained within.

The primary thing I have ever done in my life that consistently reduces my stress is go pick up sex with strangers. Yeah, not doing that any more. So I’m hosed.

I do gardening. That counts as a hobby. It is horribly arm intensive and expensive so I have to carefully dole out my pleasures. Yes, I can always weed for free. Ask me how happy gardening would make me if all I got to do was weed. (Technically gardening isn’t usually that expensive. I’ve had a few larger issues in my yard to correct. At this point I think I am past most of the big expenses. I like seeds. Seeds are cheaper than plants. But I wasn’t going to plant trees from seeds. It’s too hard.)

I clean as stress relief. But I live with people who do the opposite of cleaning all day and that raises my stress. It is an interesting balance.

Running is kind of a good thing. Only finding time that isn’t pre-6am is hard. And frankly, this is the only time I get to sit in silence. I’m not fucking giving it up for running. I will be too angry all day. I need to sit in silence. I need it.

I dearly wish that all these little hand craft hobbies didn’t make me angry but they do. They make me so angry and hateful that I really don’t want to be near anyone for days. I can’t have more of that feeling in my life right now. I don’t get the space to process my frustration. I have to just sit on it. No, that doesn’t make my life better.

I wish that I didn’t get so angry. But I do. I can’t unmake that fact by wishing it away. I have to live with the body I have.

I hear that my friends have hobbies that relax them and make their lives better. I’m glad that works for you. It will make me beat my children.

Yesterday the kids decided to play with one of my tea sets. One I was given as a birthday present. They soaked the tax paperwork we just received and broke a porcelain spoon.

I’m having a hard time controlling my mouth. I have to be alone in a room because I’m cussing a lot. I feel really frustrated and angry. I’m saying things I don’t mean and I need to make sure they don’t hear me.

Relaxation from a hobby comes from being in the flow state. The learning process isn’t relaxing it is torture. Flow comes after a lot of practice. So I walk up to every hobby and think, “Great. One more thing it would have been nice for me to learn years ago so I could enjoy it today. Oh fucking well.”

I like woodworking. That takes tools and money I don’t want to spend right now. Woodworking is satisfying. Knitting a fucking scarf makes me think, “Wow. I could have spent $5 and bought something more attractive. What a fucking waste of my life.”

I honestly dislike drawing. If I have to sit down and do it my stress amps. I start cussing more. I get mean really fast. No, I don’t do a lot of drawing with the kids.

I think I hate everything that is meant to be done alone. Intrinsically. That is the opposite of what I want in my life and giving in to it means admitting that I will always be alone. I don’t want to. I don’t want that to be my fate.

People tell me to find a hobby so I can relax and have fun alone. I don’t like being alone. Being alone means a walk through my shitty brain. Things that require intense concentration and learning just make me feel like I am not paying attention to my surroundings and soon I will be eaten.

I listen to music sometimes. When I’m not feeling obsessed with silence. I like music.

I do like to dance alone. As soon as someone else is there the stress amps. My kids expect me to carry them the whole time. Which makes my arms hurt. Which makes dancing not fun. Which makes me resent them. Which… it’s a bad cycle.

I feel like everything I do just convinces me how incompetent, pathetic, weak, and stupid I am.

Why don’t I go find a hobby? Because I’m a fucking loser. Leave me alone.

It’s not a bad suggestion. I get how it comes from a loving place. Being in my body full time is really unpleasant.

When people try to talk me into their hobbies I really want to launch into a full detailed explanation about how their life would be much better if they embraced promiscuous sex. Let me tell you why!

I could sell it as a hobby. I’m serious.

Why don’t I learn to make music? Because I feel stupid, wrong, bad about myself, and like I should walk in front of a bus because I am so stupid and pathetic. No really.

Have you noticed the “not rational” bit about my brain?

If I could trade my brain in for one that works how other peoples brains work I would. But I can’t.

I did rest yesterday. I read to the kids until my throat gave out. Because that’s “resting”, right? The singing practice with the home schoolers didn’t help my throat. I’m not a singer. And the kids didn’t know the words so the grown ups had to sing loudly and enunciate because a lot of the kids can’t read yet.

Because we came home early from Portland we get to go caroling with the home schoolers at an old folks home. We were going to miss the rehearsal so we couldn’t go. That was a slight factor in coming home early once my friend told me she had strep (maybe she doesn’t and it was just a flu because she feels better–much bummer all around). The kids wanted to do this.

Everything the kids want to do involves me having to teach them shit. Mostly shit I don’t know how to do and I’m not good at. I really do not have the bandwidth to go learn more than I’m learning.

This is where I run into that time as a limiting option. What balls should I drop from my life so I can “go learn a relaxing hobby” that will make me feel angry, pissed off, stressed out, and like I hate every fucking person in the whole fucking world.

I am really angry this morning. I woke up angry. I’m not angry about the comments I’ve been getting despite this rant. (Actually the comments are useful. I appreciate my friends. They cause me to think about the shape of why I am doing things and that is really fucking useful.)

Like I do need to rest more. Whether I can pick up a hobby or not is debatable. I HAVE to rest more. That’s not negotiable. Maybe I will have to find something other than a hobby because I do not find the same physical anxiety relief in it that my friends do (I am really glad it works for you–no sarcasm.) but that doesn’t mean that I get to opt out of rest.

Rest is mandatory. Knitting is not. (I use knitting as a strawman in this argument. You could substitute “do calligraphy” or “learn to make beer”, really anything.)

When I have the kids come over and do painting stuff I watch. I can explain the process. But I can’t get involved and do it myself with them. I will get too control oriented and bitchy.

I throw a lot of temper tantrums. Now that I am all big and stuff I work hard to only do them in private. So I can’t engage in group hobby stuff because my experience of doing them involves sitting and cussing full stream ahead.

I actually limit the cussing in my writing a lot. If you were in the room with me you would hear less than 20% of my words are non-curse words while I’m painting. I can make whole paragraphs and ditties using just curse words. I do slip in conjunctions and prepositions. No nouns.

Studies show that swearing lowers stress. Maybe this is my hobby.

I do care about the results of painting. So I’ve worked through my anger and hostility and I’ve learned a lot. I do enjoy it more now than I used to. I made everyone in the scene shop miserable when I was in college. After a while they only let me prime sets because they needed it done and no one wanted to listen to my mouth when it came to the harder kinds of painting.

Painting is the opposite of relaxing.

But I do still like it. I like the results. I just don’t like doing it. It is stressful.

Do you know what I used to do for stress relief? I beat the shit out of people. It is incredibly relaxing. And fun! If I had more spare time and childcare I might take up boxing. Noah and I are talking about enrolling the whole family in martial arts in January.

I do seated work. I write. I read. Isn’t that enough sitting? I cuddle with the kids for at least half an hour often more than an hour every day. Isn’t that enough? I’m sure my ass is in a chair for at least four hours a day. Surely no one needs to sit more than that…

I actually kind of think that is the role the pot plays in my life. It physically relaxes me. I sit down while I smoke. It’s awesome.

More baths? I could start taking daily baths. Those help to physically relax me.

I need to run almost every day. I just need to. I need to stop cussing at everyone. Although it is hard to not use it as stress relief. I mean good grief. I’m trying to not do things like cutting–is cursing really a big deal? I mean really? In the scheme of things?!

But it is actually more important than the cutting. It really bothers me that it is true but it is. Cursing in front of people will cause me far more problems than cutting. It is better for me to cut to deal with my stress instead of cussing all the time.

That feels really sad.

This is what I mean when I say that I live in a time and a place where my problems are mine. I can’t share them with my community. I’m not allowed to telegraph stress.

Learning is hard for me. It is stressful. I cuss while I do it. I always have. I have been getting in trouble for this since I was five years old. I’m unlikely to develop more control over it than I have right now. I can’t wait until my kids are adults and I can start swearing in front of them more. That’ll be awesome. I will have given them a childhood where they got to experience not being around a nasty angry person. They will be able to handle my stress not being about them. That’s the long-run goal. Fifteen years to go.

You can’t get better at things unless you deal with the frustration of learning. But I already have an ambient really high level of frustration. Adding more makes me defenses crack and then I’m not really fit to be near.

It’s about balance.

And yet what I’m trying to do is teach my kids to do stuff. Teach them how to be an adult.

I do learn in front of them. But I’m really fully stocked on what I’m trying to learn. I’m doing stuff I planned in advance. I’m slowly acquiring more skills in a conscious way because I am teaching them. I’m learning cooking and gardening and how to maintain a house. These are things that people do need to know. My kids won’t have to work on these skills as adults; it can be run as a background thing in their lives. The goal is competence.

I think that maybe I should think about co-working during writing time. With the kids I mean. They can do their own table work at the same time. They can always find something to do.

I feel kind of insecure about not directing my kids. I don’t tell them to do art. I don’t tell them to draw or practice writing or whatever.

They just do these things. I give them a certain amount of money every so often and we go to craft stores and they pick what they want.

I really enjoy watching them enjoy these things. But I’m shit at making the kinds of things they like to make. I don’t have the physical coordination. The irony is staggering.

Fiddly work makes me crazy. Is that a character flaw? I like sudoku. I play that a lot. Maybe a book of them in my Christmas stocking? That would get me to close the computer and sit with the kids…

That’s all I’ve got right now. I’m trying.