I have always been someone who never really gets bored.
I have enough interests and hobbies to keep myself busy for hours. Whether it is playing football, gaming on the PlayStation, or spending an evening with Netflix. I also very much enjoy buying LEGO sets and occasionally smashing them together.
But over the past year I have rediscovered an old hobby, and I am incredibly happy it is back in my life.
Growing Up In The Nineties
I had the pleasure of growing up in the nineties, and I often look back on that time with a lot of love and nostalgia.
For me, it was a time without all the little screens. A time when you did not always have to be “on”, and there was not this constant feeling that you had to do everything.
In my free time, I usually did one of two things: I played outside with friends, or I sat somewhere reading a book.
Reading was always encouraged at home. My amazing mother read to us all the time, and even though we never had loads of money, we got all the book packages you could order through school every year.
Birthday? I would get a book from every grandparent, uncle and aunt.
Reading was my thing. I devoured books like oxygen.
Discovering The Internet
Then secondary school happened. We got a computer at home, unlimited internet from @Home, and there went my reading peace.
In the years after that, I still read books now and then. I have gone through the entire Harry Potter series multiple times, for example. But reading structurally, every day? That was gone.
Not because I did not want to. Not because I did not enjoy it. Mostly because I no longer had the calm for it.
Because of the internet, films and TV shows, I had become too lazy to sit still for an hour and make the effort to discover a story.
An Old Hobby Rediscovered
But since Maaike and I started living together, reading has returned to my life.
Because my girlfriend loves reading too. She tears through books the way I tear through my favourite McDonald’s order: quickly, without breathing, and always wanting more.
Which is lovely, of course, because it made me read more again too.
It sounds incredibly domestic, but before going to sleep we both read now. Every evening. E-readers ready, lamps dimmed, cosy in bed with a book.
Disappearing into other worlds. Letting my head calm down. Then falling asleep properly.
Reading gives me back something I had been missing for a long time: real peace. No screen, no rush, no noise in my head.
Just a good story, and nothing else.
And maybe that is the best thing an old hobby can give you.