Letter from Boston Amateur Hobbies By MASAKO YAMADA	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
アマチュアの趣味 雅子さんは、「どうしたらそんなに趣味に費やす時間があるのか、勉強は忙しくないのか」と聞かれることがあります。ピアノ、歌、料理、執筆、縫い物…。本業は物理学を学ぶ大学院生ですが、雅子さんは実に多彩な趣味を持っています。多忙な毎日を過ごしながら、趣味を楽しむ秘けつはあるのでしょうか？

Last week, I wrote about my latest hobby: sewing. I mentioned in the article that I had gotten patterns for pig dolls and frog dolls on sale and I went on to describe the making of the pig dolls. This week, I report that I have finished making the frog dolls!!

People have asked me how I find the time to do such frivolous things like sewing, cooking, freelance writing, piano and voice. I am a busy graduate student, am I not? My answer is really simple. In order to do one thing well, I must expect the quality of the other things I do to drop. Sometimes, I must completely forgo doing other things.

I spent almost twelve hours on Saturday sewing the frogs. During these same twelve hours, one of my roommates talked on the phone with a friend, went to school and discussed research with a colleague, went to Boston Common to ice skate and went to a party in Cambridge.

Another roommate went to the gym to work out, studied at school, watched a movie and hung out at a friend's house. In the meantime, I was busy ironing, cutting fabric and sewing buttons. I hardly left the room to go to the bathroom, much less to prepare and eat a meal.

Of course, the question is whether making a couple of dolls is worth sacrificing going to the lab to do extra research or sacrificing the company of friends. Certainly, it's not every weekend that I would spend an entire precious day hunched in front of my sewing machine. However, not only do I consider these extracurricular activities to be an important part of my life, I think they make me a more balanced person.

In general, my hobbies tend to be rather asocial hobbies, since they all involve lots of time spent alone. I've always been a person who appreciates this kind of private time and I would be the first to admit that these pleasurable hours are essentially of no use to anybody but myself.

It has taken a very long time, but as I get better at my hobbies, I am finding that there are more and more ways that I can put them to good public use. My piano lessons have led to my performing for the public, my years spent cooking have led to my writing a food column for a local magazine, and my sewing skills will — hopefully — lead to my being some kind of Santa Claus sewer.

From the start, I have planned on giving away the frog dolls. I think that is one of the reasons I spent so much time working on them. The pig dolls that I made last week took a lot less time, since they were for myself. I'm not of the "it's the thought that counts" school that validates giving away sloppy handmade items to others, and I worked hard so that these frogs would have a polished look.

I often feel full after preparing a fancy meal, and it's not rare for me to go without eating while others enjoy the fruits of my labor. The feeling I had when I finished the frogs was very similar.

I've made efforts to refine my hobbies so they don't have obviously amateur qualities. I suppose that on some level, I've always considered all of my hobbies to be as important as my primary occupation of being a student. However, because of time constraints, they have never been developed fully.

My piano teacher just told me that I am lucky that, as an amateur musician, I can choose to play whatever I want to play. It's true that if I don't feel like practicing, I don't have to, and that I could quit tomorrow without any economic repercussions (besides saving lots of money on tuition). I understood what he was trying to say, but I couldn't help thinking, "Yes, but I will never be as good as you are."

I would choose to be pretty good at lots of things that I like, rather than be very good at one thing. This is not the right choice for everyone — it will not make me rich or famous — but it works for me. I do think it's a bit ironic that I fear that my hobbies are not up to par because I don't have the time to refine them. Perhaps I should be more worried that my hobbies are cutting into the time I spend on my real job.

Shukan ST: March 10, 2000

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