I sailed through the hospital doors wearing a pencil skirt and three-inch high heels, just 21 years old, all dressed up and packing what I believed were essential to the fight ahead: a tube of Necco wafers and the project—ten skeins of deep blue wool, two long wooden sticks and a cabled sweater pattern. Never mind that I had never actually knit. I needed to look good and hold something in my hands besides heartbreak.

My shoes slid to a halt in the doorway of her room. Under a small mountain of white blankets my mother whispered, “Take those damn shoes off, I could hear you a mile away.”

I kicked them under a chair and took her hand. We had a few days to wait for the tumor diagnosis.

Knitting had always looked like a slow way to nowhere. But what to do with my hands in the endless hours ahead? A week before I had asked my cousin to teach me, my voice wobbling. “Forget I said this is an old lady sport. I need something to do.”

She looked at me sideways. “In seven days?”

The basics seemed straightforward; knit into the front, purl into the back, keeping the flat and bumpy stitches hidden. I made copious notes. Then I ran through a local yarn store, grabbed a pattern, wool, and the needles.

As the hospital quieted down for the night, I pulled a metal chair to the side of the bed and balanced the instructions on my knees. I pulled the wrapper off the new needles and froze. I was immediately lost; cast on? decrease? turn cable? I searched my notes for clues. My mother’s breath deepened into sleep.

I flipped the pages back and forth, trying to decipher the symbols. Four decades before cellphones, Google, or YouTube for on-demand problem solving I was on my own, with the slimmest of knowledge, my only contact with the world a pay phone down the hall. The needles slipped this way then that, the yarn ball jumping around in my lap as I clumsily wrestled each loop on and off the needle. Then three stitches fell off and disappeared. I swore. My mother opened her eyes.

I knew she had knit once. Several hats and even a Nordic sweater she had made my father during their college courtship days. I wondered if he had kept the hats after their divorce. I wish I had taken them.

“Hold your hands steady!” she croaked, her throat raw from the breathing tube. “Sit up. Oh no, there goes another one!” I had envisioned myself as Florence Nightingale, quietly knitting in the corner, the peaceful rhythmic click of the needles relaxing my patient, but the mess I was making turned out to be much more diverting.

When the next nurse finally pushed sleeping meds into my mother’s veins, the first ball of yarn had had enough. It jumped off my lap and slow-motion rolled under her bed. I dropped to my knees and crawled my arm under the bed frame. When I stood brandishing a dust-covered ball of yarn I had holes in the knees of my stockings. My mother took one look at me and burst out laughing, wincing as the jiggling pulled on her incisions. Unwittingly, I had also packed comic relief.

“I know it will be beautiful. Eventually.” Her voice softened as the drugs pulled her under. I tucked the blankets around her and moved to the hallway, leaving the door slightly ajar to keep her in my sight.

Back in 1980, when security was nonexistent and COVID inconceivable, family could stay the night. I whittled the time away cross-legged, back against the wall, a humming florescent light overhead. Regretted my outfit but leaned into my night vigil: sucked the Necco wafers one-by-one, chocolate first, refreshed my coffee from a machine down the hall, tip-toed into her room every hour to pushed the hair from her forehead and stare at her white face. After every break I grasped the needles again and kept going.

At about 1 a.m., sleep-deprived and staring at my hands in despair, a pair of white laced shoes stopped in front of me. Hands reached down, unraveled a knot in the yarn, then took the needles and picked up a dropped stitch. I looked up and smiled at a young nurse with sparkly earrings. “Looks good!” she said. “Hold your elbows closer,;it will take the strain off your wrists.” She headed back down the hall.

One stitch grew into inches of knitting. I concentrated: in and out, in and out. Cried about my mom. Laughed at my mess. Dozed using the skeins as my pillow.

By dawn my project was knotted and curled in my lap like a small navy dog in need of the emergency room. I fished a dime out of my purse, slipped on the abandoned shoes, and headed to the payphone.

“Well,” my cousin said evenly, “here is the most important thing you need to learn.” As she talked me through, I ripped the entire project out row by row and rewound the yarn, casting on for a smaller size. When my mother woke up, I procured tiny cups of vanilla pudding which we ate off elfin plastic spoons. She fingered the soft wool. Her blue eyes glittered.

That night I joined two communities for the rest of my life: children who lose a mother too soon and people who knit. I put my head down on the bed and she rested her hand on my hair. She talked about her travel plans. I knew despite the results we would fight to the end.

Lessons to begin again, no matter how hard.

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Alexandra Dane writes about what lies deep in the marrow: life, disease, memory and hope—always hope. Her work explores her mother’s cancer and her own: Cake is published in the 2026 food anthology If Memory Serves. A finalist for the 2025 Swamp Pink Prize in Nonfiction, winner of the Annie Dillard Creative Nonfiction award from The Bellingham Review, Alexandra Dane is published in The Sonora Review, Two Hawks Quarterly, River Teeth and San Fedele Press’s American Writers Review, among others. The tiny big things happen at www.alexandradanewrites.com and her knitting can be seen on Instagram at @adaneknits.

They were going to throw them away.

Four sets of curtain fairy lights, impossibly tangled, each with 10, maybe 12 feet of fine wire.

They handed me what looked like a three-foot cocoon.

“Have at it.”

I put them in the back seat of my car.

I couldn’t wait to get home and untangle them.

At home, I made my favorite ginger tea, grabbed a cookie from the jar, turned on the fire, and sat on a big Moroccan pillow so I could be level with the cocoon, formerly known as fairy lights.

Of the forty ends, only one was visible.

It called to me.

Here I am.

I followed its path through the cocoon, through knots, through crossings, through small tightening pulls that tried to split it away from itself.

After about an hour, I freed my first strand.

I wrapped it around my wrist in a perfect spiral, secured it with a hair tie, and set it beside me.

It wasn’t going anywhere.

Not until the others were free.

That was hours two through six.

Of day one.

While at work the following day, I realized my fingers were sore playing piano.

Funny. I hadn’t practiced.

Then I smiled.

My fairy lights.

Suddenly I couldn’t wait to go home.

To untangle the mess.

To discover the order in the disorder.

To return the lights to themselves.

At home, I sat on my pillow.

My husband made my tea, my biscotti, and turned on the fire.

He didn’t ask if I wanted help.

He knew the answer.

I tried to listen to music, but it was too distracting.

I had one goal.

Find the ends.

I had untangled seven individual strands the night before, but the cocoon had barely decreased in size.

How could that be, I thought.

Maybe untangling was like cleaning.

Before the cocoon could shrink, everything inside it had to loosen first.

I pictured the cocoon shrinking.

My hands hurt.

By midnight, with only a small dinner break and a single glass of wine, I had uncovered the first complete section of the nest.

One strand.

Made of ten smaller strands of the finest wire.

Threads, almost.

Tiny glowing hives along the wire.

So delicate.

And now, carefully wrapped, no longer at risk of tangling again.

I looked to my left.

Somewhere in that cocoon, there were thirty more ends.

Thirty.

I should have been exhausted.

But instead, I was invigorated.

The rest of the week repeated the first day.

Work. Tea. Cookie. Fire. Untangling.

I was finally on what looked to be the last set of strands.

Ten, maybe twenty ends left.

I held a needle used for embroidery.

Thick, but sharp.

It would help me separate the remaining ends with ease.

I looked behind me at my work.

Two completed sets of fairy lights, each strand wrapped and tied, hanging neatly.

Symmetrical.

Ordered.

I had even arranged the hair ties in rainbow order.

They made me so happy.

Now to find another end.

As I worked my way through the finally shrinking cocoon, I felt an unexpected sadness.

It was getting easier.

Before the fevers and the coma, I solved things quickly.

I used to finish Sudoku puzzles during intermissions at concerts.

Word games. Patterns. Puzzles.

My brain preferred shortcuts.

Now it takes the long way around.

It follows every crossing.

Every knot.

Ideas arrive slower now, but more completely.

The fairy lights only asked one thing:

Find the next end.

Then I picked the needle back up.

I separated the wires carefully, as if performing surgery on conjoined twins.

The last set took almost no time at all.

It was only midnight.

My hands didn’t hurt.

Or maybe I didn’t notice any pain.

I slowed down without meaning to.

I set the needle aside.

I would finish the last few the old-fashioned way.

Old-fashioned, as of last Sunday.

I remembered finding the first end.

How exciting it was.

How complete it felt.

I remembered that day’s cookie.

Warm.

The fire.

The tea.

I unraveled the last strand.

Somewhere along the way, the work had stopped being about finishing.

It had become finding the next end.

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Kari Burroughs Kraakevik is a composer, writer, and arts educator based in Colorado. She owns two arts education companies serving more than 200 students weekly and writes about embodiment, neurodivergence, performance, and modern womanhood. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Genre Society, Infocalypse Arts & Literary Magazine, Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism, Larina’s Lit Lounge, and Divergents Magazine.

My matrilineal line can be traced in fabric and fibers, beginning with my great-grandmother Anna, who saved the scraps of her husband’s worn, patterned blue shirts to stitch together, making a quilt my mother found, unfinished, in a trunk in her own mother’s house in the mid-1990s. At one of my bridal showers, my mother gave it to me, finished by a tailor against a deeper blue background. I felt a shock of connection when I fingered it: work upon work upon work, gift upon gift upon gift, generation to generation. The quilt is so delicate and the shirts so threadbare that daily use is now hazardous to the fabric itself, but I cannot bear to let it go.

From my grandmother Jean, who was neither sentimental nor warm with us, came two crocheted blankets made with cheap synthetic yarn in colors I suspect were carefully chosen to match my brother’s and my bedrooms when we were teenagers. They are indestructible, useful for any number of tasks and destined to outlive everyone I know.

From Goldie, one of Jean’s five younger sisters—a broad, vibrant woman who hugged hard and spoke gushingly about anyone she loved—I was gifted the perfectly knitted pink sweater I treasure, its tiny, even stitches in horizontal lockstep reminding me of the day she tugged it straight over my chest and winked. These sisters bickered constantly throughout my life, each criticizing the other’s handiwork to me in thick Brooklyn accents. Now, despite the many washes they’ve had in the years since their makers’ passings, these gifts carry a kind of DNA that can’t be soaped away: in my family, what we do is make things for each other.

My mother Diane refused to learn crocheting or knitting. Instead, she taught herself to sew. At first, she made simple things from patterns and then, when I was very little, began to assemble patchwork quilts, not yet aware that she was taking up her own grandmother’s practice. Few in my generation made it to adulthood without a quilt from my mother; in fact, when my brother’s raucous childhood bed-jumping tore through the first one, he became the rare recipient of a second quilt. I can remember her laying her unfinished quilts across the dining room table, tape measure in one hand, basting tape in another, careful notes on yellow legal pads at the ready. My quilt, a pattern of brown and white squares with flowers and gingham, has been tattered and re-sewn, new edging added by tailors and new tiny yarn bows tied one at a time between the squares. I bring it out of the trunk where I store it when I have trouble sleeping; it’s made for a twin bed, not the king one I share with my husband, so it’s just for me: the imagined sensation of my mother’s ghostly hands smoothing it over me in the dark.

My daughter Ronni, great-granddaughter of Jean, taught herself to crochet nearly ten years ago, learning from videos online. Our collection of her handmade hats is impressive, the weights of yarn varying so that I have a favorite for every season. She has finished other crochet projects—stuffed animals, small blankets, coasters, flowers mounted on pipe cleaners—but the hats are my favorites. No one told me that someday my child would make me items so useful, perfect, and splendid. I wear the hats like secret report cards, privately gloating. My daughter made it, I tell the strangers who admire them.

It was a regret of mine, for many years, not to have something tangible to leave behind as my ancestors have and my daughter will. I thought I possessed only more ephemerally-productive skills; I thought of myself as a good cook and baker; a passable gardener; and a loving storyteller, able to bequeath memories and ideas and traditions, but nothing physical. I tried learning both knitting and crocheting and failed. Sewing requires the kind of precision that eludes me entirely. It wasn’t until I discovered the fiber art equivalent to paint-by-number that I began to create something that might, in the end, outlast me: cross-stitch samplers.

Cross-stitch, spanning the middle-ground of equipment requirements between the yarn arts and sewing, asks only for a hoop, a fabric grid, a needle, and a collection of embroidery floss. Beyond that, I need only what I think of as the recipe for each project: a pattern, downloaded from the internet, for a wreath of flowers surrounded by an irreverent bit of text. “DOING MY BEST” read my first wreathed creation, followed by “WELL SHIT,” “HAVE A NICE POOP,” “IT’S PROBABLY FINE,” and “A WISE WOMAN ONCE SAID FUCK THIS SHIT.”

Anna, Jean, Goldie, and Diane would likely be horrified at the language, but they would recognize the lowering of blood pressure as I sit down to work on each new project. They would know the hybrid sensation of productivity and relaxation that comes from taking up the fibers with one’s hands, the sweet reminders from threads stuck to one’s sleeve, the secret thrill of a new project as it morphs from unrecognized potential into a shape that can be discerned by passers-by. My great-grandmother, grandmother, great-aunt, mother, and I have shared, across time, moments of laying our hands on something we’ve made for someone we love and imagining that object extending long past our lifespans. Who else will hold this, we all wonder, and will they know who I am?

Sometimes my daughter and I sit together on the couch and work on our projects as we watch TV together. “Look how cute this is,” we each say, sometimes, but mostly we just move our hands in silence. The work speaks for itself and, we hope, always will.

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Debi Lewis is the author of the memoir Kitchen Medicine (2022). Her short fiction and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Pangyrus, Eureka Literary Magazine, Bon Appetit, Hippocampus, and more. Find her speculative fiction Substack at ThisCouldHappen.Substack.com.

My roommate and I live in a tiny walk-up apartment in New York City. Yet we still find room for what we affectionately call the “DJ booth,” a small table that holds my new DDJ-FLX-4 controller as I practice DJing every night. (My roommate is a very kind person who claims not to be bothered by my botched attempts at transitions.) Our TV stand doubles as a bookshelf for the two books I’m currently reading, and also contains craft materials that are perfect for multitasking with a movie.

We laugh about our varied kinds of play, which some internet circles have taken to calling “hobbymaxxing,” or the pursuit of multiple hobbies at once.

I’ve always been someone whose “free time” was suspiciously full. As a child, my mom shuttled my brother and I from soccer practice to ballet, from choir camp to math competitions. It was the late 2000s, when this well-roundedness was still heralded not as expectation, but as the liberty to transcend labels, be anything, and do everything. We watched Troy Bolton choose basketball—and theatre—in our favorite Disney Channel original movies. We read about Hermoine’s Time-Turner, skirting the limitations of time in order to learn as much as possible.

As I grew up, this blessed freedom soon became enforced. The best college applications weren’t just about excelling in one passion. Admissions officers wanted to see passion in multiple areas.

Even celebrities are hobbymaxxing now. One Vulture profile late last year described how actor Josh O’Connor “diversified his hobby portfolio,” like it’s something you can invest in, something that produces material returns and appreciates over time.

I worry that my hobbies aren’t simply things that intrigue me, that instead they’re a carefully calculated mix to paint me as someone accomplished, interesting, educated, and fun. When I unfold the “DJ booth” and try to deduce which combinations of keys and lyrics and instrumentals blend well into each other, am I really enjoying the meticulous process of turning the EQ dials and lining up the beats, or am I envisioning myself publicly performing and being admired for it one day? When I sit down to write, the experience itself can sometimes feel dreadful as I plague myself with doubts and criticism before 100 words are even on the page. Am I drawn on by a perverse love for the written word, dreams of reader appreciation, or both? Inspecting my hobby-related goals for this year only makes me question my intentions more.

I want to read one book a week. (Read: I am cultured.)

I want to write a novel this year. (Read: I am creative.)

I want to learn to DJ and book a club gig. (Read: I am fun.)

I can’t deny that I want all of these things and that I mostly enjoy working toward them. But are these goals really a product of my diverse interests? Or are they a sign that even in my leisure, I still value productivity, buying into a capitalist dream of the well-rounded individual who wants to be observed and lauded for achieving?

Perhaps hobbymaxxing is just an insidious manifestation of the #girlboss who does it all or a self-improvement trap, reminiscent of the Pride and Prejudice, Regency-era “accomplished woman” who’s expected to read, paint, play pianoforte, and keep an attractive figure, honing all the skills that comprise a privileged, upstanding citizen.

Time is finite, and resources limited. How can one do it all? As Elizabeth Bennet says, this accomplished woman would be “a fearsome thing to behold,” indeed. But then, because time is finite, how can one not want it all? The impossibility makes it that much more desirable.

We each only have about 4,000 weeks of life within us, if we’re lucky. I can see the beautiful fruit that could grow on each twig of Sylvia Plath’s fig tree if I picked one hobby and let it flourish. If I just focused on my writing, I might become the next literary star. If I devoted all my free time to practicing creative DJ transitions, I would be headlining clubs in Ibiza. If I read more, I could become a BookTok influencer, able to get my hands on releases early and meet the buzziest writers.

I can see and appreciate these possible permutations of myself. But I also fear what I would lose if I became a master of one, focusing on a single hobby so as to turn it into something profitable rather than something for myself.

I can’t decide if my efforts to try it all are at best, brave, or at worst, a very proud miscalculation of what is possible for one person. But at a potluck, who wouldn’t be tempted by the range of items in front of you at different times? Sue me for wanting a bite of each.

Mixing 2000s club hits together reminds me to dance around a little every day and gives me an appreciation for popular music, the way it rises and swells and brings us along on the journey. Reading helps me appreciate the lives and intellects of others, how the twists and turns of a few phrases can completely transform a worldview. And writing helps me appreciate my own thought process, at times outlining and at others letting something mystical flow through my fingers as I type away.

Is it so horrible, so depraved, if I cycle through them all and pursue what ignites me at any given time? Is it a life poorly lived if I dabble in everything, not long enough to be an expert, but free enough to have tasted it all?

I don’t think so. So I’ll wake up tomorrow and read my daily pages, practice my DJ transitions, and build out my Save the Cat beat sheet. I’ll go to bed tired, without an accolade to my name, but very full.

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Hailey Oppenlander is a public relations professional and writer living in New York City. She has too many hobbies and probably too many thoughts.

I’m not a sweet, young thing who would attempt a clichéd act of seduction. My demographic is middle-aged, and my get-up was less trench coat and thigh-high leather boots, and more black nylon poncho and-neoprene booties. Still, I was stark naked under my coat as I recently took an early-morning walk of shame.

It was my girlfriend who had encouraged the hobby that led to this out-of-character behaviour. “Just do it,” she said, followed by a dose of the kind of peer pressure that had me dropping acid with her in grade ten. “Everyone’s doing it. Celebrities do it. In my group we even take photos and post them in a group chat.”

Photos? This was supposed to be an incentive?

“I’m out,” I said.

“Agreed. At first it’s hard to get into it,” said my cool friend, “but once you take the plunge you’ll wonder why you don’t do it more often.”

Her enthusiasm prompted a little internet research.

Turns out I already had everything I needed. That is, unless I wanted some accessories to improve the experience—available, with a click of a mouse, to be delivered to my door in nondescript brown-paper packaging.

Proponents say it will cure just about any ailment. It’s supposed to boost mental health. It might lower blood pressure, decrease the risk of diabetes and reduce inflammation. It’s considered a workout. Apparently, all I had to lose was my muffin top. And, as I would learn, my dignity.

Whether any of the benefits are legit, one thing is sure. Athletes are doing it. Real professional and Olympic athletes. They do it all the time.

I’ve always wanted to be an athlete. I was sold.

But my pal lived far away, and I didn’t want to go solo. Nope. If I was going to dip into the icy (okay, cold) Salish Sea, I was going with a posse.

So I went online and found a cluster of cold plungers who meet at a nearby beach every morning at 7:45.

I bought booties and matching black neoprene gloves to hold my Raynaud’s disease at bay; Raynaud’s constricts my blood flow and turns my toes and fingers white and useless in the cold. My tender blood vessels seem to have inherited my hyper-sensitive personality.

I arrived at the beach at the appointed time, where eight other daring souls were clustered in the warming morning sun. The beach gave off the inviting musky, seaweedy aroma that smells like home to this West Coast gal. I followed the flock as they donned toques, disrobed to their bathing suits, and walked straight into the ocean.

Gasping, I crossed my arms tight to shield my chest from the frigid barrage. When my feet just barely grazed the pebbled bottom, I shivered and forced myself to breathe as everyone around me casually chatted.

Finally, at some imperceptible (to me) signal, the little gang turned and made for the shore.

I hunkered in that 51-degree water for five whole minutes—a triumph. That is, until I got to the log where we’d dumped our belongings. As my fellow plungers ducked under pricey swim ponchos to change incognito, I realized the impracticality of my terry beach towel. I’ll spare the details of my not-so-presto-change-o, but suffice to say my new friends have seen more of me than I’d been prepared to show on a first date. Thankfully someone had snapped the obligatory group shot before my Janet-Jackson-worthy wardrobe malfunction.

Early the next morning, any lingering humiliation had been washed away in the wake of my first full night’s sleep in a decade—a podium performance for this menopause-weary woman. Given the result, another plunge was a no-brainer. Still, I wasn’t quite ready to commit to the parka purchase, as I’d learned they can cost upward of $250. Besides, I had a black rain poncho I was sure would do the trick. I shoved it into my bag and headed to the beach. This time it was pouring. Only two other brave souls were waiting at the log. I undressed and followed them into the deep. To my surprise, the water felt warmer. Was I already an athlete?

Back on land, I smiled for the camera and ducked under my poncho. Unfortunately, it was narrower than I’d imagined, and the nylon was as inflexible as my frozen muscles. My newfound confidence floundered as I struggled to wriggle out of my sopping one-piece, finally flinging it into a clump on the sand. As I grabbed my bag of dry clothes, I noticed the other two women were dressed and ready to decamp but clearly too polite to leave me there exposed and alone in the rain.

“Having some issues?” said one, just barely holding back a snigger.

I took in her loose hoodie, sweatpants, and practical flip flops, then looked to the pile of workout tights, sports bra, socks and sneakers I’d brought. I knew I was sunk. I had barely gotten my swimsuit off; it would be all but impossible to tug any of those body-hugging garments onto my damp skin. So I held my head high, wrestled my feet back into the wet, sandy booties, gathered my stuff, and squish-squashed my way to the parking lot.

Ten minutes later, I sat in my driveway laughing as I peeled my bare thighs from the leather seat of my little hatchback, grateful to have made it home without being stopped by the police and arrested for public indecency.

Again, I slept through the night. I was hooked. Cold water immersion may not be the panacea proponents claim, but in our increasingly metaversed and cyber-isolated world, it feels great to start the day in community. Best of all, taking the plunge has forced me not to take myself so seriously. At 60, that’s a lesson long overdue.

My fancy new swim parka is scheduled to arrive at my door in its brown-paper package in three-to-five days.

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Kelley Korbin recently completed her MFA in creative nonfiction at the University of King’s College in Halifax, Canada. She is working on her first book, a reported memoir about medical assistance in dying entitled Exit Stage Rite: Lessons for a Brand New Way of Dying. Kelley recently jumped on the cold plunging bandwagon in her hometown of Vancouver, BC and finds her wet, frigid mornings to be a welcome and surprisingly social accompaniment to her solitary writing practice. She’s been published in the Globe and Mail, CBC, Chatelaine Magazine, Ski Canada Magazine and The Jewish Independent Newspaper.

Four years after my 14-year-old daughter died unexpectedly, I started tangling. I kept telling my therapist I should be “over it” by now. She disagreed. My brain, once organized and sharp, was tired of wandering. I wanted to be done. Maybe not “done” with missing my daughter but DONE with the brain-mess. That part needed to go.

I learned about the Zentangle^® method from a client. “It’s kind of like doodling, but with a more mindful approach. I think you might like it.” I felt called to go.

I was coaching execs through big decisions, volunteering for theatre at concessions and backstage, planning family vacations. My life kept moving. I did most parts well. Then I’d stare at an open space on my calendar, confused about what to do next despite the lists upon lists of things that needed my time. I wasn’t used to that.

I told my new tax person, “I used to be really good at math and for some reason, now I can barely add two numbers. You’re gonna have to be patient with me.” I hired an assistant because it took inordinate energy to schedule clients through the snarl in my brain. I couldn’t even read a book.

My therapist told me my brain had changed; it was real. “You suffered a trauma, Ellen. You’re right that your brain isn’t working as it used to.” I didn’t believe her. I asked if I could get an MRI to prove it. Secretly, I wanted to believe her. Then it would all make sense and I could cut myself some slack. I feared no one would believe me if I said my brain had changed when my daughter died. That sounded like an excuse.

The founders of the practice created it to bring calm and beauty to all. “There’s no right, no anything, just patterns,” a certified instructor said. Showing up on Sundays and Wednesdays gave me something to do, an anchor around which I could swirl, something solid to come back to through the week. Even when I told my therapist I didn’t know why I kept going, it moved from “something to try” to a calendar block I scheduled around.

It starts with gratitude, something I needed. Then, marks on the page—four dots in four corners of a 4x4 tile of cardstock. Those marks are just that, a start. When I felt stuck, I learned I merely had to begin. I didn’t have to do everything. I could start small. Breaking the blank page was sometimes enough to take me somewhere. On weeks I couldn’t even comprehend an email, I could make four dots.

We connect those dots with lines, forming a border around the tile. One teacher liked to inhale before she started drawing a line and exhale slowly as she drew it. Deep exhales did drop my shoulders. My therapist had been trying to get me to breathe more deeply. This was a magic door to her dreams.

Next we make a string, a simple swirly scratch or a few lines, anything that divides the square into smaller containers for tangles. Tangles are what it’s all about. There are hundreds of them. Small marks that don’t look like anything until they nest together when something beautiful starts to emerge. I had the sense that was happening in me; maybe if I could wander through the fog, something beautiful would show up.

One instructor started class by saying, “Whatever is going faster than slow, let’s slow that all down.” Her words were a permission slip for me, freedom to stop performing my A-game.

Zentangle’s motto is: Anything is possible, one stroke at a time™. That became true as I walked through grief. When I tangled, I learned to hold the card up and look at it from various angles. Perspective shifted. I saw things hidden in different views. Over time I recognized different expressions of grief in my living daughter and in my husband. An instructor said, “Every so often, pause to look at the big picture to see the beauty forming.” Yes, slowly, there was beauty forming in my smaller family of three.

Then shading: the shift from flat, two-dimensional drawings to 3D designs floating in space, optical illusions pulling me deeper into the craft. “Darkening the background helps us see the thing as it is,” my instructor said. That’s probably true about grief. I don’t know what I really am yet, though.

When the leader said, “We are never too far gone to get us back to center,” I softened. I wrote those words on the back of the card, wanting to remember. Maybe grief wasn’t pulling me away from every single thing I thought I knew about myself. Maybe it would drag me somewhere better. I could hope.

We finish the hour and I have a beautiful something that invites me to stare. I rotate the angles and choose my favorite. “How do you know it’s your favorite?” my therapist will ask. “I don’t know.” That answer is my brain’s frequent response when she wants to know about my body—how I feel. I still don’t know.

I put my chop, my initials to say I made this, at that favorite angle. It reminds me I’m a creator, not only a messy-brained mom, missing a daughter. We turn on cameras and share our work. That’s the final step: sharing and appreciating the creation.

After we close Zoom, I show my husband. He holds it. Turns it. Considers something new. I show my living daughter. She gazes deeply. Tells me she likes it—or not. They look at every square. In the middle of the chaos, they pause to see another version of me, one with a little less mess. A better version of what I used to be, emerging from the shading.

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Ellen Ranson Moore is a recovering executive and Executive Leadership Coach. She’s at work on a memoir, but not for an hour on Wednesdays and Sundays. She lives in Maryland with her husband and daughter and has 36 Zentangle tiles framed in her guest bathroom, plus hundreds more like breadcrumbs through her grief. @EllenRMoore

No new hobbies! I already had too many projects. The cuff of a sock dangled from my knitting needles, a stretchy T-shirt waited to be seamed, an essay begged to be finished, and a piano part required practice.

But then, three years ago, I needed a birthday gift for my adult daughter Elizabeth, and I remembered a cute crossbody bag pattern I’d spied on Facebook. Everyone was making it. The slim, classy beauty looked perfectly modern, useful, and wearable.

Despite my oath to forego new hobbies, I bought the pattern to try it. I bought the hardware. I bought canvas for the body and leather for the flap. When I discovered trendy webbing, I bought that too, for the straps. This is not a new hobby, I told myself. I’ll make one bag, stuff $100 in the cute little zippered pocket, and return to my other projects.

I gave it to Elizabeth, and she loved its hook closure, multiple compartments, and, of course, its bonus bills. She slung it across her chest and used it every day for both work and play. Her friend Kassie admired it, so when the holidays arrived, I made one for her. Kassie’s friend Stephanie liked it too, so I made one more.

With each new bag, I experimented. Nickel shouted modern and hip. Bronze said antique. Woven webbing spoke boho. Making artistic choices satisfied my creative instinct, and thinking about a potential recipient added to the joy. What started with one bag morphed into a collection and became the hobby I didn’t think I needed.

I explored designs and bought patterns for larger totes. I sourced fabrics and linings, and soon oodles of purses and bags dangled from hangers in my closet.

Was my unintended hobby now an obsession? What would I do with all these bags? Years ago, my family stopped exchanging holiday gifts in favor of family time and shared meals. But when my sister-in-law made a festive dinner, I gave her one as a hostess gift. And when my niece brought me a present from her travels, I gave her one too.

Elizabeth discovered my stash of bags and said, “Oh, they would be perfect for the symphony orchestra raffle!” I gave her three.

Why couldn’t I abandon this new endeavor? What kept drawing me back to my sewing machine with new ideas for one more bag? Perhaps it had to do with where the bags ended up.

I’ve said for years that I should do more volunteer work. My only acts of charity are blood donations and participating in rallies. With my new hobby, generosity felt more accessible. I could work at my own pace, without uncomfortable tourniquets or harsh partisan politics. Each bag required thought, time, and energy, but the real satisfaction came from imagining who would receive it.

My other hobbies—sewing, knitting, piano, writing—benefitted only me. With a few hours of work, I had a new T-shirt, a pair of socks, a piano piece to play, or payment for an essay. Bag-making, however, turned my attention outward. When sewing for a specific person, I thought about their style. What colors do they like? Are they practical or romantic? Do they tend toward minimalism, or enjoy big and bold? Once I gifted the bag, my reward was watching them enjoy what I had made.

A few months ago, my cousin hosted a gathering at her house, so I brought a bag for her. Last week, Elizabeth picked out three more for this year’s symphony raffle. Eventually, each bag has found a home.

But what happens when everyone I know has been given a bag? Will I stop making them? I peeked at a favorite website last night, noticed a new design that would be perfect in linen and leather, and thought of a friend with that aesthetic. Now that bags have wrapped their way around my life, I realize giving one gift is nice, but two or three could be better.

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Nancy Jorgensen is a Wisconsin writer, educator, and musician. Her essays appear in HuffPost, Business Insider, Next Avenue, The Offing, River Teeth, Wisconsin Public Radio, and elsewhere. Her most recent book is a middle-grade sports biography, Gwen Jorgensen: USA’s First Olympic Gold Medal Triathlete (Meyer & Meyer). Find out more at NancyJorgensen.weebly.com

Smoketown’s potholed alleys are covered in ice and snow. By early afternoon it’s still below freezing, but Trellis Brewing’s parking lot is stuffed with stickered and bike-racked Outbacks and Tacomas and CX-5s. I blow into my hands and queue with 70 other cyclists memorializing the life of Alex Pretti, a Minneapolis mountain biker and ICU nurse killed by ICE agents on January 24, 2026.

The low, slate clouds over downtown Louisville spit wet snow on our helmets, mittened hands, and neoprene toe covers. We read out loud the signs we see on the backs of our contingent—“Chinga La Migra,” “ICE OUT NOW,” “Enough.” We wave to walkers who yell support, to drivers who honk in solidarity.

Alex Pretti rode bikes and died being a good neighbor. He was shot because he stood out, because he got in the way, because he challenged power. We pedal in remembrance, on big bikes and small ones, expensive bikes and cheap ones, joining 250 other rides around the world.

We roll out and face a driver who screams, honks her horn, flips us off with both hands, and charges into the group, braking her beat-up Nissan Altima two feet from a rider’s bent knee. Most of us shrug, because most of us are used to angry drivers. Most of us are used to anger.

At Tuesday Night Worlds, Lexington’s hardest group training ride, we get buzzed by trucks and muscle cars on Bryan Station Road. We’re doing 30 m.p.h. on our 20-pound bikes in our silly suits, and they’re passing within a couple feet at 50 or 60 m.p.h. in one- or two-ton vehicles, just flirting with some casual manslaughter. Lifted pickups slam brakes in front of us. Drivers use slurs as they throw what’s left of their daily Big Gulp out the window. These are good Americans who spray diesel exhaust and proudly display from their truck beds American and Confederate flags, whipping the wind.

We pedal hard, keep the bikes rubber side down, use our dumb heavy legs to make enough power to keep ourselves safe. Functional threshold power, FTP, is the magic number that tells us how much force, in watts, we can apply to the pedals in an hour. Our bike computers scoop up data on every ride, so we can compare ourselves to others.

It’s too cold to ride outside in the winter, so I sit on my indoor trainer, slurp green apple energy gels. I watch YouTube and Love is Blind and listen to Norwegian black metal when the plan calls for long, droning intervals. On these short, dark days the only power that matters is in the contact points. My stiff cycling shoes clipped into pedals, the torque of the sprint, the watts I can hold for 30 seconds or 5 minutes or an hour.

I’ve been forcing myself to spend more and more time at my threshold limit. Getting used to the pain as the minutes and miles pile up, working through the searing burn of lactic acid in my legs. Building tolerance. My FTP should improve, a new magic number bigger than the last. But I won’t know until I test myself.

I hate FTP tests. You mash the pedals for 20 minutes near and beyond your limit. But you pace yourself, too. FTP is an average of the effort you can hold over those 20 minutes of pain.

You grind. You ride at your current threshold for a few minutes and then you add more watts, a frog in a pot, a little more, 30 seconds at a little more, just one more minute at a little more. These efforts pile up and push back. You take belly breaths and drop your shoulders and make chicken arms. Your heart rate drifts, pumping harder each minute because it’s been pumping hard each minute. You doubt yourself. Your arms and back tense, you’re gripping too hard, fighting with muscles you shouldn’t be using. You tell yourself whatever you need to hear. You unclip and lie on the floor and wait for your hot thumping heart to hush.

How much more force can I tolerate?

Alex Pretti made himself big, tried to help. I hide at home, in the drops, curled like a question mark over my trainer. When the weather warms, I’ll roll Bluegrass tarmac, away from the city, alone.

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Brian McNely teaches at the University of Kentucky and races bikes. His work has appeared in Off Assignment, Bending Genres, Invisible City, Porridge, and in academic journals such as Philosophy & Rhetoric. IG: @bmcnely

Yarn is the common thread woven through all phases of my creative life. If it involves some form of string, I’ve probably explored it. Yet handspinning yarn is the hobby that lifts the most eyebrows and generates the most bewilderment over the time and effort involved. If you’re a person who wonders “Why would you spend hours knitting socks when you can buy a pack at Wal-mart for $5?” then I fear the economics of spinning one’s own yarn may shock you.

Very few get into fiber arts to save money. It can be done thriftily: using cheaper acrylic yarn, repurposing sweaters from yard sales, or selling finished items to support a yarn-buying habit. But the makers I know are in it for the beauty. We value the unique, the slow craft, the hand-dyed, and the precision with which we can make our visions come to life. Many of us have acquired a taste for ethically-made, long-lasting clothing. I could never afford (let alone find) a gold and green plus-sized cardigan in a Merino-cashmere blend from a retailer; but I have made one out of $280 and 18 months of intermittent effort, and I feel that value every time I wear it.

The allure of making one’s own yarn is harder to explain, even to dedicated crafters, since a braid of hand-painted fiber is not much cheaper than a skein of yarn, and making the yarn adds considerable time to the process. So, if neither time nor money are saved, why do we spin? For me, it’s because the act of making yarn is a bit of modern magic. You take a handful of fluff, mix it with physics at the tip of a spinning wand, and create something new out of nothing in an instant. Ta-da!

I could watch loose fibers twist themselves into orderly strands of yarn forever. The movements are so simple that pre-industrial era children as young as five years old were responsible for an entire household’s spinning needs. Using a spindle, it’s a portable form of relaxation and productivity. If you’re a neurodivergent dopamine-seeker like me, it’s a pleasant visual and tactile stim, with bonus yarn at the end! And it’s just one more avenue for creative expression and control over producing the exact garment you envision.

But I have a secret: For all that I love to spin, I haven’t finished very many handspun garments. It takes a long time to create something from nothing, and in my 16 years of spinning, I’ve completed only five projects from fiber to finished object. I’ve spun and knitted one hat, two cowls, one pair of mittens, and one shawl. This doesn’t sound like much, especially when compared to the ~260 projects I’ve knit or crocheted with commercial yarn over the years, but I treasure each handspun item more than any of the rest.

When I hold a handspun piece, I remember its origin, the feel and color of the wool as it flashed through my fingers, the specific way the fibers twisted into thread, the sometimes surprising characteristics of the finished skein after plying and washing, and the delicious energy it had during knitting that only handspun yarns possess. Each piece is a tactile reminder of when and where I was while I spun it, the stresses it soothed, and the pleasures it provided.

I started spinning while earning my Master of Science in natural resources management during graduate school. After hours of research stuck at a desk, I craved a creative outlet, and knitting just wasn’t cutting it anymore. I needed the excitement of learning a new skill, but it also had to be simple enough to calm my burnt-out brain. I needed a reason to get away from my desk and back into my body, which spinning does as well. So I watched a few videos, bought a spindle and the wrong type of fiber, and spun my first terrifyingly lumpy yarn—but I was nonetheless entranced because I had made it myself and that was amazing.

I dove into books about fiber and its sources, tried new techniques, and leveled up. I collected spindles and a couple of wheels. I spun as much as I could, through heartbreak and triumph and exhaustion and fear. Spinning was the perfect tangible demonstration of how small, stolen bits of time and effort added up to big accomplishments, something that I needed to see during grad school and afterward when I was planning a wedding, getting married, and struggling through my first pregnancy.

Soon, I was too busy and burnt out even for spinning. My toddler wouldn’t stay out of the spinning wheel and I couldn’t find a moment for myself. My spindles were bundled into pretty wooden bouquets and stuck in vases on the shelf. My rainbow of unspun fiber was stashed away. I focused on healing, working, mothering, and mending a marriage that was past its honeymoon phase. I got pregnant again, had my second son at the start of the first COVID lockdown, and life continued to spin out around me. I lost loved ones, had career shifts, and felt like all my energy went toward holding things together. For a while I became the spindle, and my efforts were the force that twisted a good life out of desperate handfuls of unruly time and raw materials.

Eventually, when my kids got older and home life became more manageable, global life became more stressful…so I picked up spinning again. This time around, I needed its grounding force. In the face of unending environmental and political horrors, I ached to make something beautiful. I savor the facts that my handspinning hobby is off the grid, that the resources I spend on it support women-owned small businesses, and that the items I make will outlast whatever happens during this shitshow of a political era. I want my children’s children’s children to be able to hold what I’ve made and know that hours of my energy were poured into it. I want them to know that when society seemed bent on destruction and things really sucked, some of us still made things. We makers create our own joy, beauty, and function out of nothing, and that is absolutely worth something.

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Alicia Morandi is a biologist, environmental consultant, and mother of two from Rhode Island who writes poetry and essays during the midnight hours. She likes to spin yarn, knit, crochet, and play ukelele during stolen moments. She posts on Substack at unmask & make and Instagram @amorandimakes.

I get obsessed with word counts. I think most writers do. And yet, I have picked up a new hobby that involves words I never count: writing and sending cards and postcards.

This hobby is actually a return to old habits. As a member of Generation X, I saw my first computer in high school. After a summer away from home, I made friends who lived all over the country and we spent the next few years writing long letters to each other about our lives. My parents divorced when I was in high school, and when I left home, my childhood belongings were largely scattered or disappeared. I would love to find those letters again.

When social media started becoming popular in the early 2000s, I was a little hesitant. But it reconnected me with some people who were important and that drew me in. Ten years later social media was an important part of my work as a non-profit communications and fundraising manager, and it was also a tool I used to connect with friends all over the world. I was certain it was a net positive. It didn’t give me the negative feelings about myself that other people reported, I figured I was adapting to the pace of technology.

Like almost everyone else, my trip downhill on the social internet happened slowly; I almost didn’t notice. I stopped reading except for articles that were posted by friends, and eventually fed to me by the algorithm. Focusing on writing felt impossible. Time went by, and habits became a lifestyle. Then last summer I got a new phone, and didn’t log into Facebook, X, or Instagram. I kept only Substack.

I got so much time back. I’d spent hours of my life scrolling through things that weren’t necessarily bad, but they weren’t things I deliberately selected. Instead, they were presented to me as if I’d stumbled upon them, but they weren’t my proactive choices.

Enter postcards, which I have complete control over. Postcards give me an opportunity to look at an image, think about who that image reminds me of, and then send a short and directly relevant message to that person.

My girlfriend bought me a set of pens and stamps in January 2025, and I started buying postcards. Now I’m experimenting with making my own. I’m not claiming any kind of anti-tech analog purity; I write them in front of the TV while watching basketball, Stephen Colbert, or Gilmore Girls. Then I walk down to the mailbox and send them away.

This is a wildly imperfect system, and I love that. There is no “sent mail” folder, and I often completely forget what I‘ve written to someone and have to rack my brain when they respond. I also don’t keep track of who I’ve sent postcards to. If you adopt this habit, you might be more vigilant, especially if you worry about equity or have siblings who’ll be upset if you sent a card to one but not the other.

Another small word of caution: So many of us are feeling overstretched, stressed out, and at max capacity, and there are people who receive postcards or letters in the mail and take their arrival as a kind of guilt-inducing act. I know that I’ve felt this way in the past when folks have reached out to me and I haven’t had the energy to respond.

I chose to follow my instincts here and focus as much as possible on people who express interest in the practice. Lots of my friends send texts saying that my postcard made their day. They talk about what a joy it is to get real mail. Many of them have started buying and sending their own. My last post on Facebook, after not posting for quite some time, was to ask if anyone wanted to join my postcard list. It drew a very positive response.

One of the most recent cards I sent was to the daughter of one of my oldest friends after we met for dinner over the holidays. I wrote something like this:

Someday you’ll be at dinner with a friend that you know right now and they, or both of you, will bring one of your grown children. It will feel like a total blur, and a total blessing. xoxo -- Emma

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Emma Margraf is a Northwest writer with words in The New York Times, Folks, and her Substack, Bites of Change. As a former Sassy magazine reader she is also very excited to have contributed to Another Jane Pratt Thing.

Two Februaries ago, I sat in a bar in Shoreditch watching the Kansas City Chiefs play the Philadelphia Eagles for the Super Bowl at 2 a.m. I’d never cared about sports enough to go to bed quite that late before. But I was actually invested in this game, partially because of the homesickness I felt after recently moving abroad, and partially because of the then-novel romance between my favorite songwriter, Taylor Swift, and some tight end. I wasn’t a football fan, and hadn’t been one—at least, not since the Pittsburgh Steelers gave the NFL a regular run for their money circa 2009. Still, I convinced a group of friends to gather and watch the Big Game for the first time in years.

The bar’s environment was exhilarating. Just for the night, I’d chosen to root for Kansas City, and every suspenseful play or ambiguous call got my blood pumping. Not only was I having fun, I felt like I was part of a community, maybe for the first time since moving to London in January 2024. When I cheered, so did half the room. When I gasped, so did someone else three tables back. Having neglected sports for theater early in my academic career and attended a college where attending the weekly football game was almost laughable (sorry, boys), I was pleasantly surprised by just how much fun I was having.

I waited another year for my next Super Bowl experience, and after that game, I craved more of that feeling: sitting on the edge of your seat, banking on chance and a prayer, feeling the excitement of the strangers beside you and holding your breath together.

I decided to just pick a sport to get into and begin learning it. Basketball was an easy choice. Why? The NBA was the one league where Pittsburgh didn’t have a team. For me, football, hockey, and baseball were already covered. But I could untraitorously root for the New York Knicks in the city I’d lived in since college.

I can’t claim I had absolutely zero experience with the sport. My dad was a local basketball star in high school, and I’d followed in his footsteps—up until middle school. Not a natural athlete by any means, it was clear quickly that my above-average height for a 10-year-old girl didn’t make up for my lack of ball-handling skills. More so, at the time, I thought that athleticism was something you were born with, not something to work at. You either had it or you didn’t. So I set my basketball knowledge on a shelf, only to return to it 15 years later.

I began by zooming in closely, learning my chosen team first. A friend of mine gave me the advice to “First, just learn the name of a single player you find hot. Then learn the name of the guy he passes the ball to. And keep going.” Although I didn’t lead with a basketball crush, I did follow her advice in part.

I learned the key players of the team, googling their records and alma maters and going down ESPN rabbit holes to figure out when exactly they’d joined the team and how their stats had changed. I watched games with one eye on the television and the other on my phone, following the Google play-by-play to make sure I didn’t miss any moves.

It was one of the biggest learning challenges I’d thrown at myself in years. I was practically starting from nothing. But that admission of absolute ignorance gave me absolute freedom. I had no shame in searching, “What is a field goal?” or “Difference between a guard and a point guard,” because how would I have known the answers?

After I watched a game, I’d tune into the Knicks Film School podcast by , listening to the breakdown of the previous night’s matchup and the hosts’ predictions for future games. I learned what their cited statistics meant and compared them to our rival teams’ stats. When I didn’t understand something, I had friends to ask.

Being vocal about learning the sport has come with its own rewards. Twice now, friends have offered me spare Knicks tickets. The first time I walked into Madison Square Garden for a game, I was absolutely beaming at the chance to watch the action live alongside my fellow fans—with even NBA legends in attendance (even if, at first, I had to look up who they were). I’m proud to still be learning about basketball, and unlike in my career-adjacent interests, like writing and filmmaking, where I feel the pressure to be an expert all of the time, with basketball, I’m happy to lay all of my cards on the table. A year ago, I knew nothing. Now, I know something. Isn’t that something?

My sporting experience has been a reminder that I can always start over from zero, and not every interest has to be a career-driving opportunity. When it comes to basketball, I’m proud to admit that I don’t know the answer. Just give me a few minutes, and I’ll figure it out.

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Alexis Buncich (she/her) is a writer, actor, and producer based in between New York, London, and Western Pennsylvania. She loves writing about the Earth, culture, love, and the comedy in being alive. You can find her work in Worth and Nonprofit Quarterly. She explains Taylor Swift lyrics at Taylor Swift, Explained and runs a weekly NYC/London events newsletter at Overt Consumption. Learn more about her work at alexisbuncich.com.

I can’t do anything.

It’s a secret I clutched close to my chest, stuffed under my bra like a wad of tissues masquerading as desirability. And the masquerade had been pretty successful for the past four years. I’d graduated high school with well over a 4.0, I’d played soccer, worked as a lifeguard, volunteered at summer camps, led Model UN and the school newspaper and the Arabic Honor Society and several other clubs I’ve completely forgotten about at this point.

I could fool anyone. Hell, I even fooled my dream university—tricked them into offering me a full scholarship.

But the joke’s on them.

The joke’s on them because I cannot, in fact, actually do anything.

I dropped out of college two months into my freshman year, my years of repressed sadness suddenly exploding all over my life, drowning me in a cesspool of my own rotten waste.

I know I can’t do anything, because when I went to seek help from one of the university psychiatrists, he told me after a ten-minute conversation that I should take a leave of absence.

I guess I couldn’t fool him.

I filed the withdrawal paperwork the next day. I moved back home the next week. My boyfriend dumped me over text the next month. Just like that, everything I’d built for myself collapsed into oblivion.

So, there you go: I can’t do anything.

I was so fixated on this idea, so convinced that I was a complete and utter failure, so sure that I’d never be able to achieve anything new ever again, that it became my defining narrative. As I blew the next year of my life out the window in endless puffs of smoke, my parents began quietly urging me to try something again. Try applying to another university, try taking some classes at the community college, try something. But who were they kidding. We all knew I couldn’t do anything.

Bleary-eyed and desperate after wasting away my first year of adulthood in my childhood bedroom, I confided in a friend about my ineptitude. “You just need to try achieving something really small to rebuild your confidence,” he advised. I knew he was right. No stakes. No pressure. Just something to convince my brain that I was, indeed, capable of doing something.

I don’t know why I picked crochet. I hadn’t dabbled in the textile arts since my grandmother had briefly tried to teach me to sew when I was ten. But something about the repetitive motions, the individual skills that meticulously built upon each other, the material outcome of your labor—it just sounded so relaxing, so tangible, so purposeful. It seemed like just the thing to get me out of my funk, and to prove to myself that I could actually do something.

The next day, I drove to the YMCA thrift shop and spent $40 on hooks and multicolored yarn. I started watching and rewatching YouTube tutorials that walked me through the basics. How to make a chain. How to start a new row. How to create a magic circle. How to fasten off. I followed along with the videos at half speed, practicing the skills over and over before undoing all my work and starting again. I found solace in the trance-like repetition of it, and sunk hours just into making and undoing long, meandering chains and messy, uneven rows.

But with all the hours I spent on it, I watched my skill level quickly skyrocket. Suddenly, my chains achieved just the right tension, and my rows started looking even and uniform. After seeing my proficiency advance like that, crocheting quickly became an obsession. Slowly but surely, I built up my confidence enough to try actually making things. A purse. A wallet. A sweater. As I gained confidence in my crocheting, lo and behold, I slowly started gaining confidence in other areas of my life, too.

It started with one class—a women’s studies class I decided to take at my local community college. When that didn’t end in disaster, I decided to take a full load. My confidence grew tenfold, and before I knew it, I put myself on a fast track to get my associate’s. I applied and got into another university. I overstuffed every semester with every class I could fit in, including over the summer and winter breaks. I graduated at the top of my class, earning my associate’s and bachelor’s degrees in a total of two and a half years.

And somewhere along the way, I realized that maybe the one who had really been fooled by me…was me.

All crochet projects start with one chain. Building blocks that pile on top of each other, inch by inch, until you have a beautiful tapestry. I can’t help but think that without that first chain, without trying to teach myself the very basics of a new skill, I wouldn’t be where I am today. I would still be stuck in my parents’ house, chain-smoking and binge-watching TV in an effort to escape all the fears and self-doubt I’m afraid to confront. Still convinced I can’t do anything at all. Still too scared to start weaving the miraculous tapestry of the life I live today.

So, yes, okay. Maybe I can do something after all.

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Bethany Hansel is a freelance writer and communications specialist who can, in fact, do some things. When she’s not writing and running communications for nonprofits, Bethany loves to write her own stories that explore her grapplings with mental health, identity, and belonging.

I was a pre-teen girl, 11 or 12 years old, when my grandma gave me a pair of roller skates. I don’t know why she gave them to me; I can’t remember ever voicing a desire for roller skates. Goodness knows I wasn’t the sporty try-something-new type. Now that I’m writing this I realize maybe that’s why she gave them to me: to get my nose out of a book, get some action out of my head and into my body.

Whatever the reason, I fell in love. My sister and I went skating at our local roller rink, loving the lights and the music. Singing and skating together amongst strangers.

But with my own skates I was free to skate alone, at any time. And I did. I spent hours on the basketball court behind our house in Ontario, Canada, skating around and around and around while singing and imagining to myself.

I never tried to get good at skating, only to be comfortable at it. I wanted enough skill on skates that I could let my body move while my mind imagined. (Sorry, grandma. This kid isn’t getting out of her head no matter how many wheels you put under her.)

That freedom, that place where childhood is still intact but at a slightly older age, permitting you to take it places, was phenomenal. It lasted until…

My stepdad molested me when I was 12 or 13. My memory of the touching is cruelly intact, the specific age of my budding body less so.

My thoughts shifted from examining the experience of life to determining what to do with it.

I stopped skating.

I’m 51 now.

A few years ago, I invested in a pair of roller skates.

I had reminisced for decades about those carefree roller days, but it hadn’t ever moved beyond remembering into doing.

Then my grandma died and left us grandchildren some money. With mine, I invested in roller skates. (I’m only now realizing that grandma bought both of my pairs of roller skates. Well done, grandma.)

I’ve spent the last few years skating around our backyard swimming pool, singing passionately to myself.

Why now?

It’s simple: I want my beginning back.

I stopped skating after being sexually abused, but I didn’t stop moving.

When I was 21, a mother of two, I moved to Texas. While there, I had two more children. We lived in Texas, then California, then Texas, and back to California— around and around and around. Now one of my sons lives in Texas, two live in California with their children, my gorgeous grandchildren.

And one son lives in Quebec, Canada, with me.

Now that I’m back home, in Canada, maybe I want my beginning back. I’m steeped in reminders of it here.

These seasons, these smells, these languages, are the ones I grew up with.

Canada and the southern United States are similar, but different. In the United States I was still driving on the right side of the road, meeting people of diverse backgrounds, and telling my children they were free to become who they wanted to be. I was still paying with dollars and tipping waitstaff. I was still going to McDonald’s to let my children use the playland. Returning to Canada, though, I was hearing French again, experiencing familiar immersion again, seeing open windows on the houses when I went for walks again. I was eating Nanaimo bars and Poutine. Drinking Tim Horton’s coffee and turning up The Tragically Hip on the radio.

This stirring of my youth had me remembering my story, thinking of the events—beginning with the abuse by my stepdad—that pushed and pulled me in a variety of directions.

This stirring is perhaps why I went beyond remembering into action, investing almost $400 CAD in a pair of simple roller skates.

When the skates arrived, I was thrilled. I was also out of practice. Skating wasn’t like riding a bike; my muscles hadn’t memorized the motions. I was wobbly and unbalanced, like a baby learning to walk. I hid in the basement, where I could use the walls and pool table to catch myself, and where any onlookers would be people who love me.

Soon, though, I worried about ruining the floorboards with my stoppers (ah, yes, I’m definitely an adult now!) and headed to the concrete in the backyard. Around and around our swimming pool I went, the water at first a frightful threat (I’m not a good swimmer at the best of times, never mind in skates) and then simply a lovely friend. Me going around and around and around, singing to myself, while the pool offered guidance and atmosphere.

I’ve spent the last several summers roller skating.

When the skating is smooth, when the songs are just right, when the breeze is gentle and the pool shimmers, I’m my young self again. I’m that girl in skates on the basketball court.

But I’m not only that girl; I’m also a woman with grown sons and five grandchildren. I’m also a woman distracting herself between visits. I’m also a woman expanding herself in this space. I’m also a woman practicing balance and celebrating life.

I’m also a woman willing to look silly, singing with wild abandon while skating in circles.

I’m not doing any of it particularly well, but I’m doing it all with everything I’ve got.

I’m not fooled; I didn’t get my beginning back.

But this is another beginning.

And it’s a good one.

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Tsara Shelton is a writer of musings, a sipper of coffee, a reader of stories, and a reluctant performer. Her work has appeared in publications such as Blank Spaces, The Medley, The Mighty, Disabled World, and Sexual Diversity, among others. Tsara enjoys mixing insight with humor via her blog, Autism Answers with Tsara Shelton.

Submit your Hobbies essay

Every annual appointment, my doctor asks me if I have hobbies. I guess it’s important to our overall health. My answers never quite fit. Cooking? No, that’s more of an essential chore. Writing? No, that’s my profession.

“Do you collect anything?” she asked.

“CORKS!” I yelled.

She sat up straighter on her stool, likely due to my enthusiasm.

“Maybe we need to check your liver enzymes,” she said as she wrote up my blood test order.

As an Italian, wine is part of my food pyramid. Growing up, my family cooked with it almost daily, even though they only drank it socially. It was never high-end—just your basic Chianti that came in those straw-decorated decanters you later stuck a red candle in and used as a centerpiece on a red-and-white-checked tablecloth.

Later in life, when I married a man who collected wine, I started saving the corks. If we drank a pricey wine for a special occasion like an anniversary or a promotion, I’d write on the cork to remember the wine and the event. As our cellar grew, so did our wine-tasting parties. The first one, in North Hollywood, called NoHo Wine Club, met monthly because all four of us were local and loved visiting wineries in Santa Ynez, Paso Robles, and Napa.

Over the years, the club’s name changed as we moved to the suburbs to start a family. We only got together about 4 times a year, and now we were The Four Seasons Wine Club. These tastings, along with wine with dinner, supported my cork collecting. I had bowls, vases, and baskets full of corks.

When my son was in preschool, the teacher sent home a wish list of arts-and-crafts items, like paper towel holders, egg cartons, and coffee cans. When I saw corks on the list, I was excited! Finally! My corks served a purpose! I knew I could use them to make a cork wreath or a trivet, but I only had time to accumulate these corks, not enough time to do anything with them.

I emptied all my cork holdings into two Trader Joe’s paper bags and happily walked into the preschool, handing them off to my son’s teacher. Her eyes popped out of her head, similar to the corks being born from my many bottles. Oh, shit. Is she about to report me to Child Services? I wondered. I started explaining that we were collectors and had a wine cellar. We were part of a robust wine club. These were corks collected over a five-year span! She tentatively took the two bags and stared at my son, I guess to make sure he wasn’t missing his lunch box or shoes.

Even with giving away all those corks, my collection built up once again. In kindergarten, my son had a playdate, and when they got tired of Legos, he decided to play with a basket of corks, throwing them at each other. They were light, so I didn’t think much of it until they poured the entire basket on top of the friend’s mother’s head from the top of the stairs when she came to pick up her son. After that, play dates were at her house.

The corks were also practical. When my son started doing math, and I was of no help, we used corks as visual aids to solve problems while lining them up on the table. It worked! We figured out how long it took a train leaving the station traveling at a certain MPH to reach its destination.

Today, I continue to collect my corks, but they aren’t as invasive. I blame that on acid reflux and cutting back on my wine-pairing habit. Still, my corks bring back memories I don’t want to forget, and at some point, corks may be obsolete. More and more wineries are opting for screw caps; corks could become more of a novelty, like bottle caps, restaurant matches, and other things that have gone to the wayside because of a more practical alternative.

Maybe before the holidays approach next year, I’ll find time to build a cork Christmas tree or a few cork reindeer, or maybe I’ll just save them for future grandkids who can throw them on top of unassuming visitors just for the fun of it. They are harmless, after all—in moderation.

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Andrea Tate is an essayist and writing professor at Antioch University, where she teaches Writing and Publishing in the Individual Master of Arts program. Andrea’s published essays have appeared in Newsweek, The Los Angeles Times, HuffPost, Manifest Station, and more. Originally from New York, Andrea now lives in Southern California with her family and their 100-pound shepherd, Brody Bo Beau. To learn more about Andrea, visit her website at andreatate.net.

Submit your Hobbies flash essay

It’s hot today, I say to the dust motes. They hover in a listless sunbeam cracking through the high windows of my community pottery studio—suspended, caught in a liminal place. They’re airborne now, but meant to be part of something larger, more solid.

“It’s Monday, October 6th,” NPR broadcasts live from their Washington, D.C. studio, just a mile or two down the road. Hamas, apparently, will accept a peace deal with Israel. Strange to hear that here first, with clay already making a sludgy paste on my fingertips. I should have learned that at work, had I not been furloughed in the government shutdown. I would normally have dug into the news more closely, to draft remarks or perhaps a report. But I’m here instead.

I slash into the still-damp lamp base I’m working on, my carving knife coaxing wilting dogwoods and curling leaves from the raw hunk of mud. A woman works next to me on a fresh batch of mugs. She’s furloughed, too, and has heard through the grapevine it could be two to six weeks until we return to office.

Unseasonable, this heat—I scratch at a fresh welt, though the mosquitoes should be sleeping now. The trees in Rock Creek Park should be turning golden and russet, too, but they’re holding out for change. For a cooldown, for the temperature to lower a bit before they decide what to do.

The stubborn green canopy camouflages National Guard troops, still here in the city. Still lugging huge rifles around, shadowed by chunky government buildings. They stroll, fatigued in garb and spirit, Starbucks in hand. They hang around packed oyster bars where loud Georgetown students, desperate for fall, down expensive Pinot and sweat through cropped sweaters and knee-high boots. They meander past young couples laden with farmer’s market totes that say What’s More Punk than the Public Library, bouncy with bright emerald kale. Outside pre-season hockey games they laugh and lurk, these tight blocks of close-shaven young men, while Capitals fans bleed red, white, and blue in a vital artery from the metro to the stadium.

What are you working on? the woman asks. The studio has been empty this morning save us two. What do I usually do? I’m a civil servant. Am I making pottery a full-time job? No. Am I still employed? Yes, I reply. About eighty percent of my colleagues were fired this year, I tell her. I’ve stumbled into them around town, heard they now work at supermarkets and bookstores. It’s a company town, people say, and the company has shuttered. It’s a loss for America, she says. I nod.

It was my dream job, to serve. I love my country, even when it’s wincing in pain. But I’m not sure how much more I can tolerate.

I may leave, I say, testing the idea, feeling it hard and heavy on my tongue. It tastes bitter. How could I, when so many were let go and I remain? There was a time it was inconceivable, when the mission was all that mattered. But torn between selfishness and sacrifice, stability and uncertainty, I falter.

Am I resilient enough to stay?

A bead of moisture crawls down my torso, drawing my attention to my clenched stomach. Past my lunchtime. The studio is busy now. The woman and I scoot over on our workbench to make room for the newcomers. I’ve heard about three-quarters of my fellow students also work for the federal government, and the studio has extended open hours to accommodate us all. Maybe we bureaucrats are just eager to create, to mold and shape, whether from policy or clay.

I want to stay. If I do go, one day I’d like to return, rebuild. I’m still in my early thirties and I care. I have time to re-invent myself. But I wonder about those more seasoned than I, who have already given so much time.

Some of these thoughts have spilled into the air between my neighbor and I as we continue to chat away. I don’t know why they would return, I say. After long careers in government, they were just tossed away.

She speaks to the workbench without hesitation. Because they’re patriots.

Soon, it will be the top of the hour. I doubt there will be a shutdown update, but I’m on high alert so turn the radio back on. Every minute or two, the door cracks open and a new face appears, bathed in blistering light from the outside.

They sit down to throw, joining us, hypnotized into something like acceptance by the dozen spinning pottery wheels, elbow-deep in mud. Too many of us now, for noon on a weekday.

It’s hot, they say.

We’re all charred inside, burning out.

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Madison Chapman is a writer and proud federal worker living in Washington D.C. You can find her work in The New York Times, HuffPost, The Washington Post, TIME, Outside, and elsewhere.

Submit your Hobbies flash essay

A few minutes after we arrived at the fair, my 10-year-old daughter found the golden prize of her dreams. Just past the group of children throwing tiny plastic balls into cups on a table, underneath the fluorescent lights of the hallway in our Catholic parish, a teenager was holding a tiny plastic bag filled with water—and an aquatic inhabitant.

“PLEASE, PLEASE, CAN I PLEASE WIN A GOLDFISH?” my daughter begged. My husband and I redirected her to cotton candy and an educational scavenger hunt. Her eyes shone with hope; she continued to plead. She knew it was now or never.

Of course I folded. Three dollars and two ping-pong balls later, the fish was hers.

At home, we found an old glass coffee pot, poured in fresh water from the sink, and gently tipped Leonardo da Fishi inside. My daughter carefully, joyfully used the handle to carry him to a prime spot on the mantle, where she fed him a boiled pea. I looked at him and just felt guilty.

Did you know that a fair fish can live for 10 to 15 years if taken care of properly? Did you know that a common goldfish can grow to over a foot long, is a voracious eater, and at its full size, needs a 55-gallon tank, minimum, so it doesn’t smother to death from the chemicals released by its own poop?

I didn’t either. Not until after we had the goldfish, who, I might add, had been blessed. I tried not to look at the statue of St. Francis petting a rabbit in my front yard.

Before three days were up, I had earned a Reddit Ph.D. in proper fish care. I was a new freelancer and didn’t have hundreds of dollars to spend on a proper setup—but I had also found out about the term feeder fish. If we surrendered Leo to a pet store, the best outcome for him would probably be a quick death by turtle.

I posted on Facebook asking if anyone I knew owned a pond. As I asked myself why I couldn’t just let it go, I scoured Marketplace for a tank. “If it’s meant to be, we’ll find a free aquarium,” I told my daughter.

We found a free aquarium.

I set the 20-gallon tank up with the filter, an air bubbler, and the plastic decorations that came with it. My conscience was clear, at least for the moment. I stared at Leo swimming under the LED lights, which felt surprisingly relaxing, then subscribed to the Father Fish channel on YouTube. My daughter assured me that I had saved a life; I felt like a hero as I pooh-poohed the idea.

When I was growing up, I had always loved visiting the Shedd Aquarium, but never seriously entertained the idea of owning a fish. They were peaceful to look at, sure. But there was complicated equipment involved. Strange smells from the water. Testing with little vials. Fish were only enjoyable if someone else was doing the work. Who wants to spend their free time doing chemistry?

I guess I did. Three-and-a-half months after the parish fair, Leonardo da Fishi is now living in the Hilton of tanks: a 29-gallon planted aquarium inspired by the Walstad method. He spends his days eating duckweed, sifting through substrate, and dancing along the front of the glass, mouthing about how he hasn’t been fed in days. I’m still looking for a friend with a pond, but also sales on 60-gallon tanks…just in case.

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Mary Stachyra Lopez is a freelancer in Virginia. She was an editor on The Atlantic’s audience team for five years. Her writing has won awards from the Society of Professional Journalists DC chapter and Catholic Media Association. When she’s not busy upgrading fish tanks, she’s telling her daughter they’re not getting a second dog.

Submit your Hobbies flash essay

All crafters are familiar with the concept of a “Stash.” Anyone who shares a living space with a crafter will also know of this phenomenon. For anyone unfamiliar with the term, a “Craft Stash” is an indeterminate (and often not fully disclosed) amount of crafting material which is stored by a crafter for use in unspecified (and often as yet unknown) future craft projects which may or may not ever be started, let alone completed. Different types of crafters have different types of Stashes, but we all recognize their importance.

There are certain unwritten rules about “The Stash,”, known only to crafters. These include:

“Non-crafters will never fully understand the value of The Stash,” and

“The reasons for the contents of The Stash must never be questioned.”

My own, ever-patient spouse is well-versed in these rules. After three decades of cohabiting, he now acknowledges my purchases with a resigned roll of his eyes and the question, “More ‘making’ stuff?”

But even I, a seasoned crafter, had to acknowledge that things may be getting out of hand when I realized that my Stash had morphed into a hoard!

I know how it came about. The empty wardrobe in the spare bedroom had long been my hiding place for Stash that I wished to remain discreetly unobserved. Nothing awful, I just didn’t need to admit to it if it was out of sight. Then we had a visitor coming to stay for a prolonged period. I had to clear out the wardrobe for him to use. I emptied the wardrobe, packaging everything up and discovering, happily, that it could be secreted beneath the spare bed.

Problem sorted. Our friend stayed for the summer, and the wardrobe was used for the storage of his clothes.

The problem really started after he left. I didn’t retrieve the items from under the bed. Instead, I left them there and started to refill the wardrobe with new Stash items. I know it’s naughty, but….no, I can’t think of an excuse. Crafters will understand.

I wasn’t aware of how out-of-hand things had become until I wanted a specific item for a project: a small bag of bells. I know I have them. I thought I knew where they were. There’s a bag under the bed with a selection of costume pieces, and I was sure the bells were in a side pocket of that bag. They were not. That triggered a full search. Every drawer, box, and bag, every cupboard and cranny I use to store materials was meticulously emptied, studied, and repacked. The entire contents under the bed were pulled out and examined. All the official storage places, as well as the unofficial, the discreet and the hidden places, were all ransacked. I didn’t find the bells.

However, I did find that there were a lot of surprises in my Stash. There were items I knew I had, of course. There were items I knew I had but had forgotten where I’d put them. There were items that I’d forgotten I had but remembered as soon as I saw them. Then, there were items that I had absolutely no recollection of ever having had! Those were the disturbing ones.

At that point, I had to face the fact that at some point, without my knowledge, my craft Stash had turned into a Hoard. I use the word advisedly. A quick search on Bing came up with the definition, “Hoard: A stock or store of money or valued objects, typically one that is secret or carefully guarded.” It seems to sum up the situation admirably. And, like all true hoards, it is filled with unexpected treasures beyond the understanding of the uninitiated.

The problem is, it’s housed in a home of limited size in West London. As such (and I write this with huge sadness), it must be kept under control. Further growth must be curbed, or there will be unpleasant consequences. To this end, I have made a pledge to myself: no more purchases until I‘ve used up enough of the Hoard to reduce it back to a recognizable Stash; no more visiting craft stores to browse (too tempting); no more opening emails from fabric suppliers (too many bargains!). I will be ruthless with myself. I will be strong.

I never did find that bag of bells, though, and I can’t complete the current project without them. Maybe just one quick look online…

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Hilary worked as an actress, entertainer and hospital clown until she was incapacitated by a hereditary medical condition (now fondly described as “The Family Curse”). The need for a more sedentary lifestyle led her to redirect her energy into more writing, alongside a varied selection of textile projects.

She lives in London with her husband, their Romanian rescue dog, a plethora of ideas, and an undisclosed hoard of craft materials. She hopes to complete all ongoing projects (written and textile) at some point in the year 2135.

Submit your Hobbies flash essay

I grew up with exactly two 1970s space exploration Lego sets. Just space, with a small s, in the days before Lego realized there was much more money to be made in collaboration with upper-case intellectual properties.

My sensitive, gender-confused farm-kid heart loved playing with Lego, especially when my oversized sensitive emotions seemed to be inconveniencing the people around me, which seemed like always.

You can’t stab together Lego pieces in anger, frustration, or impatience. If you’re sad or lonely, building with Lego can be distracting. You might not feel less sad or lonely, but you might not feel sad or lonely about feeling sad and lonely, and preventing that spiral can be darn handy.

I’m 100 percent sure I wouldn’t have called playing with Lego “self-regulation,” partly because it would be decades before adults said such words in casual conversation, let alone children. But much more because in my stoic Germanic family, it was assumed we would not have feelings, let alone regulate them.

But in retrospect, building with Lego was my undercover soothing mechanism.

I was a closet self-regulator.

My fervently Christian grandmother’s living room featured artwork that also soothed me: a movie-poster-sized reprint of a watercolor painting of the tallest building in the United Nations complex. Beside the tallest building in the United Nations complex stood a casual-looking Jesus. A 40-story-tall casual-looking Jesus. He was leaning over a bit, peering into the topmost floors in a Savior-Meets-Peeping-Tom mashup. Super Tall Jesus is mid-knock, his knuckles in contact with the windows around the 35th floor, his face in an intense partial frown. The expression was probably meant to convey concern. But if the image were nicknamed Our Lord ff The Ongoing Constipation Tendency, it might be considered in poor taste, but it wouldn’t be inaccurate.

Visits to my grandmother’s house did involve a lot of church attendance. But they also involved awe-inspiring meatloaf, very tasty scalloped potatoes, apple pies, and patience with me and my overly sensitive and inconvenient feelings. I retained my love for the artistic rendering of UN Jesus long after I retained belief that any actual Jesus was involved in a constructive manner with humankind, mediated by the UN or otherwise.

In adulthood, I rediscovered Lego as an almost unnervingly powerful self-regulation tool.

Some folks meditate. Some folks journal.

Some folks do yoga.

Me?

Although I am allegedly a radical queer anticapitalist, I hand over my hard-earned cash to purchase a box of tiny corporate plastic rectangles. And squares. And triangles. And hinges. And windows. And doors. And a round orange piece that is a basketball in one set, the foundation of Oscar the Grouch in another set, and a droid of some kind in the Star Wars set.

The small three-bedroom rent-stabilized apartment I share with two other unrelated folks in the unintentional intentional community we call Queer Study Hall is a Lego sanctuary. There are flowers, spaceships, a boat, more than a few dinosaurs. A city skyline. A train associated with a now known to be grossly transphobic intellectual property. This train is being terrorized by two dinosaurs wearing tiny trans flags as capes.

It might sound like a tremendous amount of brickwork, but I have safety guidelines for how often and under what conditions I permit myself to procure Lego. My Lego purchases aren’t reckless, yet they often come with a poke of shame. Why does it take tiny plastic objects to calm me down?

A few years ago, I had a routine knee replacement that went awry. The bone-level infection turned an uncomplicated orthopedic procedure into a very complicated seven-surgery ordeal, with MyChart mentions of “20 cc of frothy brown fluid” and “round-the-clock use of portable wound vac.”

During one particularly bleak stretch, when the implant had to be removed entirely in an effort to clear the infection, a friend visited me as I sat on my couch with my painful, kneeless leg propped up on pillows, surrounded by Lego bags and instruction books.

I was putting the finishing touches on the Lego United Nations tower, a set gifted to me for a birthday many years past. As I finished, I grabbed a wind-up plastic Jesus from my past-life religious tchotchke shelf to stand beside it.

I realized I had recreated the poster from my grandma’s living room. But in Lego.

A girlfriend had once found a copy of said poster at a garage sale and gifted it to me in a moment of “we’re not sure how ironic we’re being” humor. Now it hung with command strips, unframed but not unloved, on the back of our bathroom door.

Because of this, my friend also came to the same realization I had.

I was so embarrassed. It wasn’t just capitalist-plot Lego that was soothing me. Now it was the dumb poster and my weird childhood Christianity residue.

I guess I didn’t hide my embarrassment very well, because my friend immediately sat down on the couch beside me.

“You know, it’s not actually the plastic pieces or the weird giant Jesus working the magic, right?”

I opened my mouth to argue.

Um. Yeah, it was the plastic.

Obviously, it was bathroom-door Jesus.

“It’s the connections,” he said, becoming weirdly earnest and settling into the tone of voice used by the red-headed lady on Intervention.

“The Lego connects one little piece to another until something steadier appears.”

When did my friend become such a cornball?

“Or maybe you just get steadier! That poster connected you to someone who held space for you when no one else did. You learned early that you could build safety.”

I started to cry, which wasn’t that unusual. I didn’t have a knee. I cried a lot. Plus, an earnest emotional lecture from a queer who’s usually dry and sarcastic can also be a lot.

I gestured to my wind-up Jesus UN diorama. “It’s not weird?”

“Oh, it’s totally weird,” he said, grabbing me in a big hug. “Just in a way that also makes perfect sense.”

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Kelli Dunham is a nonbinary ex-nun, trauma-informed comedian and storytelling nurse. Kelli is the author of seven hilarious books about not hilarious subjects including a bestselling book on puberty and the creator of the hilariously helpful (and helpfully hilarious) Substack, Hoping Intentionally.

I got punched in the nose the other day.

Nothing alarming. There was no blood, and it wasn’t even that painful—it was more that I’d never really gotten punched anywhere, at least not for real. Silly dares as a kid to see how much it hurt getting punched in the stomach were the extent of my experience in the matter—until I decided to take up boxing.

I’m still not entirely sure how this decision came to be, if I’m being honest. The why might be irrelevant, except that whenever I tell people I’m boxing, that’s the first thing they want to know. Maybe because I’m a woman, and I’m small, and except for my recent Buffy, the Vampire Slayer obsession, I’d never exhibited an interest in physical fighting. Did I want something new? Was this my post- breakup version of “I got bangs?” Did I feel the need to prove anything to someone, or to myself? Or was I just…bored?

Regardless of the reason, on a pretty uneventful Tuesday evening, I showed up at a trial class for women’s boxing. Nervous, awkward, feeling out of place amongst women who clearly knew what they were doing. But I was committed to liking it—I very, very badly wanted to. So I bought hand wraps, gloves, and a mouth guard, and I signed up.

Perhaps rather naively, one of the things that stood out to me during those first couple of classes was how much technique there is before you even attempt to punch something (or someone). We spent most of the hour burning our legs (squats, lunges, and some painful variations of both), learning how to move swiftly, aligning the body in a way that felt odd, foreign. It all moves as one: arms, elbows, core, legs, all together to hit, to block, to duck. I enjoyed the technicality, probably because it’s something my body is good at. It was a confidence boost, and in my sometimes overconfident brain, I could hear a voice saying, “Look at you, being so naturally good at this!”

And then, at the very end of my third class, my brain high on self-praise, we were told to spar.

I knew sparring was just a fake fight, but I felt immediate panic. No more confidence, just plain fear. I didn’t want to hit anyone, nor did I want to get hit back. A ridiculous notion, really, when I had willingly joined a sport in which the point is to knock someone out. What was I thinking?!

Within those first two minutes, the duration of a sparring round, it became clear to me (and to anyone looking) that I was undeniably bad at boxing. A true human punching bag, no technique whatsoever.

Be it stubbornness, hope, or simple stupidity, I kept showing up. Like a fish out of water, I wondered every class if maybe this just wasn’t the right sport for me. I dreaded a surprise sparring at the end of the day. I felt silly throwing out punches with my spaghetti arms, unable to move my head out of the way, my gloves only good at protecting me from the jabs and crosses that kept landing on me. My coach, blessed be her endless patience, shouting from the sides for me to move.

Sparring didn’t feel natural, didn’t feel fun—my brain easily forgetting everything it had learned the previous hour. No surprise to anyone that I got hit on the nose, to be fair. But I didn’t want to quit. There wasn’t any blood, after all. Yet.

We were stretching at the end of one of those earlier classes when my coach said something that stuck to my brain better than any technique or sparring instruction. On the floor, legs wide open, leaning forward to stretch the muscle in my inner thigh, she said ,“Ahora nos quedamos ahi, en la molestia.”.”We stay in the discomfort. My brain, very much trained to find analogies, metaphors, and meaning everywhere, clung to this phrase. We stay in the discomfort. She just meant stay where it hurts, where the muscles are stretching the way they should. No real hidden meaning in her words, no pep talk.

We stay in the discomfort. I repeated this to myself over and over again, at home, out and about, in bed, working, reading, walking the dog. Whenever I showed up at the boxing gym, hand wraps and gloves and mouth guard in my bag. Ready to suck, but also ready to learn, and hopefully suck a little bit less every day. Ready to stay in the discomfort, for as long as needed. I’d been hoping for some kind of cinematic montage: Disney’s Mulan suddenly finding her inner and outer strength in the span of a three-minute song. All I was given instead, all I could cling to, was patience in the face of deficiency.

Because I’m not doing this with any other intention than to just do it. I don’t want to compete, I don’t want to be the best. I want to be healthy and fit again, yes, and I wouldn’t mind getting better (which I am, for the record!), just enough to have a decent sparring round. But that’s about it.

There’s something freeing about taking up something without many expectations, even if this can make slow progress more challenging. I’ve found myself less and less worried about the discomfort, though, less bothered with not being as good as I’d want to be. I’m okay with not being the best, with never being the best at this. Not because I don’t care—would I be getting punched if I didn’t?—but simply because I don’t have to be.

I just need to be good enough not to get punched in the nose again, and even that might be unavoidable. But I’ll survive. Worst case scenario, broken nose and surgery it is.

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Siham Lee is a Chilean writer. She holds an MLitt in Creative Writing and spends most of her time writing short stories, and personal essays in Unfortunately…No. In her free time she enjoys curating her TBR list, rewatching the same old romcoms and editing the first draft of her first novel, all at the same time.

I’ve had every kind of coffee meeting you can imagine. Drip coffee. Ice blended, cold brew. Half caff. Espresso. I’ve tried nearly every flavor. By the end of a meetup, I often felt drained. The conversations were fine. The networking was fine. But the energy? Flat. I would leave bloated from caffeine and pastries, wondering what a better way to connect with people would be.

Then I met pickleball.

A friend of mine, who’s also a colleague I once hired as a writer and producer for a comedy series where I was the showrunner, invited me to a pickleball pop-up. There was music, food, and tons of play. I had no idea the game would become my new obsession. Pickleball is a fast-paced game that I typically play on an outdoor tennis court. Each player has a paddle and you use a perforated ball. It’s a mix of tennis and ping pong. The first time I played was at a hosted pickleball event. I was nervous because I’m not good at tennis, but the trainers were so encouraging when I made mistakes.

Before long, I was hooked. I started playing several times a week. I’ve always been active and focused on staying fit by working out at the gym and rollerblading. But I’m not a sports person, outside of playing with my kids at the park with sports that they play. After I started playing with my family, I decided to become certified as a pickleball instructor. Now, I invite friends, clients, and family members to play with me. It’s my favorite way to meet up with people. Instead of sitting across from someone at a café, we get to move, laugh, and talk between points.

Pickleball feels like solving a moving puzzle. You have to predict, respond, and adjust in seconds. The sound of the ball hitting the paddle is strangely satisfying. With every swing, my brain woke up. I could almost feel it rewiring itself. Part of the reset, I think, happens because I’m actually good at the sport. Pickleball also gives me a sense of challenge and accomplishment. From a brain science perspective, the rhythmic sound of the ball hitting the paddle and the repetitive motion activates parts of the brain that help with focus.

When I play, I feel calm and alert at the same time. I also think more clearly afterward. My creativity flows more easily. I notice that I listen better to my kids and to my husband. The game shakes off stress in a way that coffee never could. I’ve also tried plenty of activities such as yoga, standup paddleboarding, and basketball with my kids. With other sports, I feel like I’m moving and having fun, but none of them clear my mind like pickleball.

I only enjoy playing on outdoor courts. There’s something about feeling the sun on your face while chasing a ball that makes you grateful to be alive.

On the court, people reveal themselves. You can see patience, competitiveness, kindness, and humor all in one game. And the best part? I leave networking meetings feeling energized. My mind feels lighter. My spirit feels stronger. My body feels rejuvenated. It’s a full reset every time I play.

Playing pickleball with someone reveals their patience, humor, and willingness to try something new. I’m competitive by nature, but what I really respect is when someone shows up open-minded, especially if we’re exploring a new business relationship or opportunity. Whether I win or lose, the game helps me connect with others in a meaningful way.

I also love the community that comes with the sport. People cheer for each other. Strangers become doubles partners. There’s teasing and genuine connection.

Of course, the cute skirts are everything. The outfits make the sport a vibe. Pickleball taught me that networking doesn’t always have to be still. It can be active and joyful. The sport makes the space for new connections and opportunities.

Now when someone asks to meet for coffee, I pause. Sometimes I still say yes. But more often, I ask, “How about a game of pickleball?”

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Angela Marie Hutchinson is the Head of IP & Talent Ventures at RPM Talent Agency. While scouting and cultivating elite talent, Angela develops intellectual property into scalable ventures across TV, film, books, podcasts, sports, live events, social media, and community-driven experiences. Angela is also the author of Create Your Yes!, which Forbes ranked as #4 book to transform your career. Angela resides in Los Angeles with her husband and their three children.

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