PROMPT: Are there any activities or hobbies you’ve outgrown or lost interest in over time?
When I was young I loved bowling.
Starting in 5th grade my friend Bill and I would walk every Saturday morning the mile or so to the Sunset Bowl lanes in Ballard, and we’d bowl a few games. I remember bringing home the scorecard each week and just staring at each frame of the scores, thinking about them, breaking them down, looking forward to our next week of games. I couldn’t sleep the night before a game, I was so exited. So it went for the next few years. I loved to bowl, and any time I was going to bowl (including the year in 7th grade when my friend Darryl and I joined a bowling league), I couldn’t sleep because I was so excited.
I don’t remember how old I was when suddenly I lost interest in bowling. Was I 13? 14? It seems like one month I was eagerly bowling every week, and then suddenly I could care less about bowling. To this day, more than 50 years later, bowling is something I’ll do if friends want to, but I could care less about any of it and I’m always glad when it’s over and we do something else.
So too it was with golf. In high school, I loved golf. Couldn’t wait to golf. Couldn’t sleep the night before a round of golf. Two or three times a week I went to the course, and when there was no one to golf with me I went by myself and would join random groups. Just like with bowling, I loved the numbers: when I’d get home each day after a round of golf I would break down my game, and at some point I had every score card filed away in my room. Was I good golfer? Not really. But I loved it.
Then one day when I was a sophomore in college I was on the course with my friends Matt, and we were approaching the 7th green, and suddenly I felt sooooooo bored. And just like that I was done with golf. Yes, I golfed some times after that, and sometimes even had fun on the course with my family and friends, but I could care less about the actual game.
And so it went. With bowling. Golf. Baseball. Basketball. Classic movies. Partying. Even dating. One moment I was totally into it, even passionate about it, and the next I could care less about it.
In my 40s and into my 50s, I loved to talk to strangers. On an airplane I’d love to hear someone’s life’s story. In a bar, the random person next to me became my instant connection. I loved hearing people’s stories so much that I started reading every random memoir I could find, and even volunteered on the Crisis Line because it was another way to hear people’s stories. Now? Barely at all. I sit quietly on an airplane, don’t engage people on the street, and had to give up the Crisis Line because I was struggling with keeping interested in it.
My life has been one of fleeting interests. Fleeting hobbies. Really into something I enjoy one day, and then totally oblivious to it the next.
There are hobbies in life where I’ve retained an interest my whole life. I love to read. I love to write. I love analyzing data. I love to exercise. And I love mountain creeks.
But there are more — sooooo many more — activities that are ultimately a passing fancy.
It can be something I fret about. And I could strive to recapture the joy I felt in those fleeting interests. But, then again, why?
I feel like the important thing is that I have things I enjoy now. At this moment. The what is less important than the whether. And ultimately I can remember and appreciate the joy I felt when I was going to do those things that I once loved.
Hmmm 
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