Rediscovering Hobbies and What Brings Us Joy

“What do you do for fun?” Has been an interesting question the past couple years. Before the world fell into a blender on hyper speed I would have said I loved travel, reading a good book, going out with friends, catching a show, meeting new people, trying new restaurants, dancing the night away but these days some of those are a lot harder to manage than others. And so, “what do you do for fun?” has become a question for which I’ve been in search of a concrete answer. Of course I still love to curl up with a good book, and I’m still a supporter of the arts, my love for a good meal hasn’t gone anywhere. But my ability to fly out at a moments notice or meet up with friends on a whim has certainly been effected over the last two years.

I think it is more important than ever that we hold dear to the things that bring us joy while also exploring what else might excite our souls in ways we might not have considered before.

This past summer I ran into an old friend who mentioned he was going to be in a show and invited me to come check it out. He was always an incredible artist so of course I jumped at the chance to see him live once again! While I was there I ran into another old friend and she reached out not too long after to see if I would be interested in auditioning for a show she was producing. Now I have always loved theater but it had been over a decade since I had been in a show. That was a part of my life that I had left behind, not by any hard decision I’d made but simply because it had fallen lower and lower on my priority list until I failed to notice it had disappeared completely. It had been years since I had even considered doing a show with any serious intent. I was delighted by her request and booked a time to audition, not believing anything would come of it, surely my skills were far too rusty to be accepted on a current working stage. These days I was only singing in the car, or the kitchen, and the closest I got to acting was using funny voices when I read bedtime stories to the kids I occasionally babysit, and it didn’t even occur to me to miss the full extent of a former lifetime of dramatic study. I had updated my skills for my current life and not looked back.

So I went into that audition with absolutely zero expectations. I used a monologue I’d memorized for an acting class ages ago that had somehow stuck in my brain the same way lyrics to songs that were popular in junior high might lurk in the grey matter of our brains. Forgotten until the memory is somehow unlocked once again. And I sang a song, a cappella, something I had last performed in the early 2000s but figured I couldn’t mess up too much. That audition sparked a little kernel of joy I didn’t expect at all. Getting to use my full voice in a room with great acoustics, rather than my “I live in an apartment and the neighbors don’t need to hear me” voice was freeing in a way I hadn’t known I’d needed.

It was months before I’d heard back. So long, in fact, that I’d assumed they’d cast the part and hadn’t bothered to let me know I’d been passed on. Except, I hadn’t been passed on, I’d been asked to play the lead. I was in shock for what must have been a full week, if not longer.

The show rehearsed every day for a month and then ran for three weeks, a schedule with ambition like I had never seen before. So intense that nearly everyone in the cast commented on it at one point or another. I had gone from no acting at all to hours a day, every day after work. It made zero to one hundred feel like child’s play with the speed we ramped up for opening weekend.

Participating in such a tremendous undertaking was as exhausting as it was exhilarating and I was both relieved and saddened when the show finally came to a close. But it made me realize how much I missed having art in my life and for that I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity.

While I don’t know that I’ll take on another enormous task as this one anytime soon I am so honored that I had the chance to take part and stretch my creative muscles once more. But I will now also be looking to the arts when people ask what I do for fun, even if it is only as a patron and not a participant.

xo,

Kate