When I was a child on a farm with two very demanding and annoying older siblings there wasn't much opportunity to get away from them when I needed. I read a lot, drew pictures, but mostly the thing that calmed me down was playing the piano. Before I was able to take lessons (it being the depression and my parents believing money should only be spent for life necessities), I learned to read music by myself. My only music was a book of camp songs. I think I can hear Tenting Tonight every time there is silence around me (which is probably why I rarely have silence around me).
Growing up in a time that little girls had to do needlework, I embroidered stuff I carted around for years and never used...tea towels, hand towels, pillow cases, table cloths, runners to cover furniture...all manner of useless things. By the time I had a place of my own, I might have used them had it been ten or twenty years earlier and before I knew better. This industriousness morphed into learning to knit, needlepoint, and hook rugs, later. By now it was no longer relaxing, it was always for someone who demanded an afghan or a hooked, long haired dog for a grandchild, a cross stitched coverlet for a newborn or some such.
This stuff was done after TV became an outlet for my eyes and ears but not my hands. This era lasted watching TV a bit in the evening while doing some handwork, then when all the teen-agers musical cacophony was down for the night, I played the piano and sang, to settle my head for bed.
There was a phase of picture taking with SLR cameras, macro lenses, long lenses, wide lenses, and all the paraphernalia that went with them until digital cameras came in. At the same time, I had a series of video cameras, starting in 1979 that kept getting smaller and smaller, clearer and clearer, until today they are tiny and give a good picture. Odd, as I remember the first camera I had, which had to be held on a tripod that took up half my living room, was the start of another hobby...archiving people and events in my life.
Travel was never considered a hobby, it was just something we did. We took pictures, made slide shows together and set them to music, and it wasn't until then that I realized I was different than most of my friends who could sit quietly and enjoy themselves. I can only live a frenetic existence that went on to silversmithing, water colors and oil painting dabbling, doing calligraphy until the computer did it better, cooked gourmet meals for friends and relatives, and look back as I told myself, "Been there, done that, what's new?"
Back to the title: Hobbies can fill your life with distraction from the stress in your body until you get to a place where you learn to relieve stress in many other ways than frenetic activity. But, I think I am ahead of most of my readers...you have to be old to be there, to learn never to worry about anything over which you have no control, to be in a place in your life when your children are no longer your immediate responsibility and you can do pretty much (within financial reason) anything you wish, whenever you wish to do it. Interacting with people has always been one of my hobbies as well as my vocation. Knowing that, I realize that the longer I live, the more people I collect around me and the more stuff I will never get to neatly take care of before I leave this world. It may be the only passive-aggressive action left to me, to leave it all for my kids (with whom I had to fight for years to clean up after themselves) the, "At last, now you can clean up after me!" In kindness, I will leave them with a full nip collection of more than 500 nips so they can have a party as they heave my entire earthly load of hobby detritus into a dumpster.
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