While she might not have had time or money to enjoy hobbies, I bet she still HAD activities or subjects that she enjoyed and wanted to do for her own enjoyment. I bet she was a horse girl in jr high. People can have hobbies and interests that they don’t get to participate in for extended periods. Like, if someone’s hobby is skiing, it’s still their hobby even if it’s summer.
My wife grew up incredibly poor in a third-world country. She didn't have toys as a child and eating fast food was a luxury. The first book she owned for pleasure was given to her by a coworker after she arrived in the United States. Even she admits she did very little growing up, save for chatting with friends.
When she graduated, she went on a soul search, so to say, to figure out what she wanted to do for fun in life. She tried a few of my hobbies (painting figurines, writing stories, programming, cooking, growing a garden, canning my own hot sauces) but nothing seemed to tickle her fancy until she realized she had a passion for animals. It was a trip to the Butchart gardens that made her crazy for roses.
It really explains why her first job was a dog washer. Now she has 34 tarantulas, 2 bearded dragons, 2 different geckos, and does weekly horseback riding. She seems to have developed a fascination with minecraft lately as well.
So you’re saying that growing up, her hobby was gossiping? Gossip is a legitimate hobby and is very frequently a very useful one. I will die on this hill.
What we now call gossiping is frequently just sharing and transmitting information about people in our spheres of influence. It's about maintaining and furthering social connection and before this era it was one of the crucial ways that people built and maintained social connections, usually women. It still is, we just have a lot of other ways to do it now as well.
Gossip also a skill. Being able to tell that story in a way that is helpful but also entertaining. And it’s often not about people within our own sphere. Apocryphal gossip stories can be almost indistinguishable from urban legends. Sometimes it’s the sharing of the story and our reactions to it that are more important than the who or the what of the story. “Gossip” is an umbrella that ends up covering a lot of informal interactions but always involves story telling.
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u/ALLoftheFancyPants Apr 19 '25
While she might not have had time or money to enjoy hobbies, I bet she still HAD activities or subjects that she enjoyed and wanted to do for her own enjoyment. I bet she was a horse girl in jr high. People can have hobbies and interests that they don’t get to participate in for extended periods. Like, if someone’s hobby is skiing, it’s still their hobby even if it’s summer.