at eight years old, i declared proudly to my mother, “crocheting is my life”.
this obsession, brought on by the enthusiastic knitting coach who ran my after-school program, was a brief but passionate interlude. it consumed my young, smooth brain in a colossal wave. i found irresistible order in the hobby’s trial and error, and accomplishment in the cumulative growth of a colorful scarf. it demanded a clear, straightforward focus i'd never given before.
i abandoned crocheting after a couple of months, but my unabashed announcement remained a family inside joke ever since; a banner to hang over any ridiculous obsession i’d gush to them about. there’s been many.
at nine years old, i was consumed by making pet rocks. i’d been inspired by a week-long class activity where, preparing for the real world of free-market capitalism, we fourth-graders made goods to be sold in a class market for construction paper dollars. my peers sold fudge brownies, M&M cookies, glittery bookmarks, and patchwork journals of graph paper threaded with colorful ribbon. for whatever forgotten reason, i chose to peddle little rocks with googly eyes on them.
these were much more than crafts to me. i grew up with a large backyard to bide my time in, and this child vivarium of sorts fueled my imagination for years. i’d sprint in wild laps around its circumference, climb each tree with low, welcoming branches, and study the aging bark around me like poems.
the week i dabbled in entrepreneurialism, i scavenged this sprawling yard for hosts. small to medium rocks with at least one flat surface were ideal to scribble on with sharpie. i made most of the rocks smile, though i gave some of them eternally angry faces. with a hot glue gun in hand (the tool that made me feel like a true craftsman, despite the fact i’d accidentally burn myself with every use), i’d stick brightly colored pipe cleaner chunks on each head to resemble hair.
finally, i’d press down mismatched googly eyes above their mouths. this was my favorite part: they’d suddenly be fused with personality, and i could gaze through little plastic windows at their imaginary souls.
i named them all, jotted down each rock’s personality traits on little slips of paper, and on the morning of our pretend-market, sold them as pocket-sized friends to my human friends. i don’t remember how much fake money i made that day—if anything, selling the rocks was an impediment to the satisfaction i got from storing them all in the plastic purple pencil box of my lift-lid school desk. i felt they preferred living with their friends and family, with me alone to protect them.
where the majority of my childhood flashed by, this period of creation remains vivid for me, and i think it’s due to how distinct this fascination was from the rest of my life—all consuming, with no judgements to trigger second thoughts. my pet-rock mania is a keepsake in itself, a childhood touchstone safe in the sentimental toolbox of my past.
after adolescence, all my obsessions were rooted in media. books and movies offered fantasies pre-packaged, ready-made, and already popular (to some degree). i crafted my own narratives within these stories (yes, maybe some of it was fanfiction, okay?) but carving out my store-bought daydreams in paragraphs wasn’t nearly as satisfying as pet-rock-making, knitting, or romping through my backyard. the worlds i wandered through were rented, and i can’t recall most of the long hours i spent dwelling in them.
obsessions can be detractors, a waste in retrospect, distracting from the value of our lives. some obsessions stole from me, but all of them left behind key lessons in focus.
focus is rare (or at least difficult) without some sort of excitement. we don’t often relish the common. days like to stick together, we like to do things expected of us, and thus we unconsciously weave our lives into predictable patterns. the best way to keep these patterns distinct, as one of my favorite high school teachers suggested, is to do new and unexpected things daily. “i take different routes home, sometimes just walking on other sides of the street, to fight off normalcy,” he once confessed to my classmate and i.
sprinkling microscopic changes into my everyday sounded like an exhausting and arbitrary practice at the time, but he had the right idea. i find myself periodically desperate to make room in my life for what i can only refer to as ‘weird shit’.
i label it this way because it deviates from my norm, and because i’d have some level of embarrassment by doing these things with or around others. weird shit with friends is also necessary—whipping up sparkly slime at midnight, putting on experimental photoshoots in costume with cigarettes and cats as props, or entering the open back doors of abandoned homes have since become golden teenage memories—but it’s harder to talk to myself freely around friends.
there’s often a necessary a cap of normalcy atop these interactions. i don’t feel like i can take my time staring into the twisting mineral of a nearby snail’s shell, as i’m silently paranoid that i’m boring the person i’m walking with. it’s necessary to consult others on where we should be, what we should do, and what the mood is. there’s usually an obligation to speak. while i love sharing curious observations, meals, and joy with like-minded people, i’m refueled by the unique happiness of doing weird shit alone.
i need time to wander through the grocery store to find ingredients for new, extravagant recipes i don’t end up liking. i need time to invent a new board game, and give up with a half-used sheet of graph paper and once-clever rules that no one (including myself) could ever follow as directed. i need time to travel the perimeter of a muggy lake and take pictures of driftwood knots. i need time to locate and expunge every blackhead floating on the surface of my skin. i need time to practice drawing realistic eyes in pastels. i need time to map out an intricate, 100-point bucket list that only a more confident me will have a chance to complete. then, i need time to do the things i wrote down.
‘weird shit’ often means making stuff with my hands, no matter how poorly constructed, no matter how stupid-feeling. creation is more important than daily me likes to consider: i want to feel like i truly used the time i spent, and to recall these memories with freshness later. i must divide my sticky time, or i’ll feel… well, stuck.
‘weird shit’ also tends to involve the outdoors. in my early twenties, i went to college between the mountains and the bay. every sunday morning, i’d research an area i’d never visited: a hill i’d never hiked, a park i’d never been to, a lookout i’d never seen, and i’d drive there to wander through it. walking around somewhere new demands fresh, living senses, making it easier to focus on sights, sounds and smells that i overlook in familiar places.
i try to collect things as i go. i seek caterpillars, blossoming flowers, and animal-shaped clouds. i bird (and people) watch with little regard for time or utility. picking fruits, shells, or rocks of any kind is a special side-quest. one especially beloved sunday, invisibly shadowed by the imminent death of my mother, i strolled along a sun-soaked beach searching for rocks that best resembled the auras of my family members. on the gravelly ride home, they bounced around with abandon in the backseat of my car.
‘weird shit’ doesn’t need to take long, nor does it need to hugely obstruct your schedule. sometimes though, it should. gleaning for a community food bank is fun, since you’re produce-picking (fun in itself) for other people to enjoy. you’ll meet great people, too. before i moved from ireland, i’d spend a handful of happy hours each month in a bright orange vest amidst dubliners, using a long plastic grabber to pick up litter around the river beside my flat. we recovered fascinating specimens, and ended our time together with a tea and sandwich ritual at a nearby pub. it’s hard to regret volunteering, and difficult to forget rare, authentic activity.
i implore you to periodically steer your attention toward something physical and new. a task that gets you curious; an activity briefly (or not briefly) all-consuming. maybe something your childhood self would relish, that you have to cross the boundaries of judgement to experience, beyond unspoken fears that it might be weird, or, equally terrifying, a waste of time.
try braiding your hair in a complex arrangement, or fermenting your own kombucha skoby in a fancy jar you found at a yard sale across town. maybe it’ll turn into a new obsession.
with love,
constanze
Quite possibly my favorite thus far, fellow weirdo!
How inspiring....you take my breath away...in a fun way!
Thank you for the nudge to be my weird self.