I went white-water kayaking earlier this week. I’m not sure if that’s what it’s called, everyone seemed to just call it kayaking or paddling, but it was so significantly different from every kayaking experience I’ve had before I feel I need to differentiate. First off, the boat is very short – standing it vertical, it’s shorter than I am. This gives it absurd handling, which translates into poor balance in the hands of someone as inexperienced as myself. I went with Mark, who has been paddling for 12+ years, and it shows. The thing with these boats is that if you know what you’re doing, you can do practically anything you can imagine and go anywhere.
It also felt like the first time I’d really tried to learn a new skill in a long while. That is, consciously tried. That’s a weird feeling, that I wasn’t ready for. I also noticed shortly after that I don’t really have any hobbies. It’s not that I don’t do anything – I have very little free time – it’s just that I don’t really have something that I’m always doing. New things keep popping up, and I embrace them, but it has left me without anything to identify with. The only thing I consistently do is surf the web, which is hardly a hobby, especially since that entails such diverse subject matter. Definitely a weird realization.