Translation: Julie Summers

Hobbies are good for you. They don’t have to be useful, clever, or even sensible, they can just be fun. I have a lot of hobbies. Some have fallen by the wayside over the years, while others have held steady through the various personality changes that a young woman inevitably goes through. Of course, new hobbies are regularly added to the mix. Like many others, I decided to try my hand at baking sourdough bread as COVID dragged on and it seemed that things wouldn’t be returning to normal any time soon. At first, my attempts were half-hearted; I’d already decided that baking bread was too difficult and complicated for me. I’m one of those people who tends to stop trying something if I’m not great at it the first time, you see. But after a month of alternately yelling at and sweetly coaxing the starter, everything somehow clicked. Afterward, I realized that the pleasure I got from this new hobby was related more to the finished product (and its quality) than the process of making it.

I didn’t give it a second thought at that point. After all, I think it’s only normal to enjoy eating good bread more than baking it. The little red hen and all that. But little by little, I began noticing the same pattern with other hobbies of mine. I think it’s way more fun to wear something I knitted than to actually do the knitting, and even more fun to see my family and friends wearing my handiwork than knitting for them (I mean, I can’t even look forward to having new clothes when I’m knitting for someone else). Having beautiful flowers gives me more joy than repotting and watering them. And so on. I was so disappointed to make this discovery about myself – am I so insanely lazy that I’m bored by hobbies unless I end up with something to show for my efforts? If so, why don’t I just buy knitwear and bread at the store?

And that’s a really good question, dear reader. Because there’s an additional secret benefit to all of these hobbies – baking, knitting, sewing, repairing clothes, growing flowers – and that’s sustainability. I know I’m not exactly reinventing the wheel here. Not so long ago, these activities were just part of normal domestic life. And I’m fully aware of the irony of labelling as hobbies the domestic tasks that forced my foremothers into oppression and financial dependence on men. That side of the issue is important, without question, but I have a maximum word count for this article, so I’ll just have to save that discussion for another time.

Today I, a young woman born in the twenty-first century, have the fortune (or misfortune, depending on how you look at it) to be able to enjoy these previously necessary chores as creative outlets in my free time. I don’t have to knit in order to clothe myself, but I can choose to do so and enjoy knowing more or less where my clothes came from. I also don’t have to bake my own bread. God knows there’s no shortage of sourdough bakeries in Reykjavík these days. But I can learn something new and practical and cut a cute little heart into the top of my bread if I want to. I can enjoy doing all these things on my own terms, patting my climate anxiety gently on the back along the way.

Musings on Sustainable Hobbies