Recently I tried to write a short description of what I spend my time doing (along with a reverse-chronological list of employers if you get my drift), and I found it really hard.
Sure, the standard tick list of cinema / reading (although recently someone asked me “do you read?”, at which I laughed, but to be honest there aren’t many people I know who do read on a regular basis) / art / theatre, opera and dance (which just affirms my middle class providence with a hint of fruit), but, hell, what do people do these days? Sport is an option for some, but watching rather than doing smacks of dressing up tv watching.
How do I describe the things I’m interested in? Walking – but not in a straight line and not anywhere particularly beautiful, cartography, psychogeography, dabble in programming, and this Internet thing. I get the feeling that previously some of these hobbies would be taken as noble pursuits, but amateur science, and a search for knowledge, isn’t taken seriously in culture today. This is also coupled with the fact that professionals, rightly or wrongly, tend to decry or pooh-pooh amateurs taking an interest in their field of expertise.
So, how do you describe things like “the Internet”? How do you describe interests in things outside your mindset?
contact
email:
chris is at anti-mega.com
Twitter:
@antimega
iChat/AIM:
antimega77