As I survey the present state of my room, it looks something like a place where well-intentioned hobbies go to die. Or perhaps not die. Maybe more like reside indefinitely. On one side of the room, in front of the heavily loaded bookshelf, the black hard case housing the beautiful guitar stands. I got it for Christmas, at first intending to teach myself. And I did, a few chords at least, from the master chord sheet my mother had the wisdom to purchase in addition to the instrument. Last week we had an informal worship session around our backyard firepit. One of the high school boys, whom I know well, wished aloud that he had brought his guitar. I offered mine. His face lit up as he asked me if I was sure. I went upstairs to get it, knowing it deserved to be played by someone, even if it wasn’t me. At Christmas, he had tuned it for me, and had kept remarking about its sound quality. He took it in his hands, and I heard for the first time what my Takemine could sound like under worthier skill than I possessed. It sang like butter, smooth and tonal, and for an instant my conviction to learn burnt brightly again. That was a week ago. I haven’t touched it since.
At the other end of my room, leaning vertically against the wall endcap, stands my newly acquired snowboard. Our two-year resident, Hannah, moved out yesterday, and instead of forcing the snowboard into her tiny car just so that she could donate it, she asked if I wanted it. I have been meaning, for the past five winters, to hit the slopes, and release my inner Shawn White. I haven’t gone even once. I was busy; rentals were too much; who would teach me. But now that I have mine own board, miraculously the perfect size (thank heavens Hannah is the same height as me), and boots, which she will drop off as soon she unpacks them, I really am hoping to go with my cousins sometime this winter. Until then, the snowboard will make like the guitar, perpetually in a corner of hope and unreleased potential.
These are not the only examples of my lack of self-discipline. My desk holds more empty notebooks than full ones, pretty books with neatly lined pages in which I meant to record “the great secrets of my life,” as Cecily would say, but never quite got around to keeping the lovely schedules I had worked out. The short stack of Japanese fiction on top of the giant stack of theology books reminds me that I meant to have read them all by now, in my self-imposed “preparation for Japan” regime (in my defense on that point, I have eaten much sushi since I have been home…which is perhaps just another failure in that budget which I fully intended to keep but didn’t). The dumbbells buried under a mountain of clothes on my chair remind me that I meant to lift them every day, get in shape, exercise, as do the athletic sneakers strewn among the Converse, flats, and kitten heels on my floor.
So like I said, the place where the passion for hobbies ignites and then is extinguished. Maybe someday I will learn the guitar. Go snowboarding. Keep the budget. Master Japanese culture. Or maybe I won’t. But I always meant to. But do you really get kudos for trying?
