Now More Than Ever, Your Brain Needs a Hobby

So give it one!

Several years ago, I downloaded the Headspace app and learned to meditate. I was surprised to learn that meditating is not about stopping your mind from wandering, or emptying your mind of thoughts. It’s about noticing when your mind wanders, and bringing it back to the present. Just for a second. Until it wanders again. And you notice again. Over and over.

The idea is to understand, and come to accept, that this is your busy brain’s lot in life, to worry and ruminate and scheme and calculate. Your brain wears a hole in the carpet from its endless pacing. But by noticing it, you can get a little distance from it. Maybe, over time, if you keep noticing, it’ll calm down a little bit. Maybe.

That’s a fine and probably useful and helpful thing to learn to do, but most of us would rather not sit around noticing our pointless, anxious, circular thoughts. We’d like to stop thinking them entirely.

For that, I recommend a nice healthy obsession. Give your brain something more interesting to do. It will drop the bone it’s chewing on if you give it a juicier one. So go find a juicier bone.

Over one difficult winter about a decade ago, I took a bunch of online classes to learn how to do travel sketching. I’d been painting in oil for a while, but everything about a sketchbook was new to me. This gave me so much to think about: Pencil or ink? Prussian blue or ultramarine? When my mind wandered, it would wander to questions about, say, how to paint reflections on water at night.

This is not just about having a distraction in the moment. It’s not just something that keeps you occupied while you’re doing it. It’s about finding something that actually sinks its hooks into you, so you can’t help but think about it when you’re not doing it. It’s about giving your mind a new place to wander to when it’s idle and looking to go out and get into trouble.

Last year, I got the idea that I’d like to buy a kayak. I haven’t actually done it yet—I haven’t even made the time to rent one nearly as often as I’d like—but I have enjoyed ruminating over it. I discovered an excellent kayaking YouTube channel, which is a fantastic time-waster, and I’ve done some deep dives into gear and technique and destinations. I’ll get around to it one of these days, but meanwhile, just planning to buy a boat is an excellent distraction.

I’ve been hanging out with a lot of birders lately because I’m writing a book on birds, and although I’ll probably never be a hardcore birder, I do appreciate the level of obsession that birding offers. The Merlin and eBird apps are geeky and addictive. The American Birding Association’s podcast is surprisingly good, and every episode sends me down another rabbit hole.

There are over 700 species of birds in the United States alone, and there might be a few hundred that turn up in your county every year. If you want to learn to recognize them by sight, by ear, or perhaps just by watching how they fly across the sunset—you’ve got a lot to learn! It’ll keep your brain busy.

Learning a language is like this. So is learning to play an instrument. So is gardening, and rock hounding, and yarn bombing.

It’s nice when there’s a bit of gear to buy, because researching and then shopping for the perfect paintbrush/knitting needles/harmonica is a fantastic distraction. It also helps if there’s a club to join, a magazine to subscribe to, a class to take, a documentary to watch or a book to read, an online forum or YouTube channel to get lost in.

But mostly, it’s just a matter of finding the thing that your big dumb brain wants to think about more than it wants to think about…well, you know. Whatever it’s chattering on about.

---

Supporters are experimenting with watercolor

We’re doing a few weeks of watercolor basics, by request. If you’re interested in picking up a sketchbook, I’ve posted over 70 art tutorials and a new one comes out every week, plus we do some live zooms and other stuff. Get the full archive and everything that’s coming next, right here:

---

The Bit at the End

Come find me on Instagram, or see paintings for sale- Right here

Order signed copies of some of my books from my husband’s bookstore, or order my books and many books I love at Bookshop.org

Take one of my online writing or art classes here

Did you know you can give a gift subscription? Invite a friend to join us!