This, That, and The Third

Athena Dixon on yearning for third spaces and hobbies

Thursdays in my twenties were for poetry. After my workday as a teaching artist at a small arts academy ended, I’d flip a switch in my head and remove the idea of labor from my love of words. Those days were enjoyable, don’t get me wrong. Alongside a painter, I co-taught a weeks-long course on poetry and watched as my co-lead helped the students design a corresponding large-scale mural. On days I wasn’t in the classroom, I wrote every kind of arts review I was assigned as a freelancer, wrote for newsletters, sold chapbooks, and sold art, too. Every creative pursuit in my life, except for Thursdays, was about keeping my head above water while I worked my way through school. I was starving, exhausted, and stressed, but I was creating massive amounts of work, paid or not.

But no matter what, Thursdays were for poetry. They were for my own work with no expectation of production or profit. Those nights I’d stand on a stage and recite my newest pieces to a crowd of friends and community members or I’d nod and clap as I listened for a new source of inspiration. Thursdays were important for what they were and not what left the halls of the venue. This wasn’t networking for future opportunities. There were no donations or honorariums. I could have charged for custom poems, set up my chapbooks on the same table where someone else sold incense and oils, or spun those nights into a business, but I didn’t. Even when a group of us started our own offshoot and did readings around the city, no money exchanged hands. We did it for the love. I resisted making Thursday nights anything potable. I wanted those feelings, those connections, to stay right where they were. In those hours, with those people, with that version of myself.

For years, I kept up the tradition of Thursday night. No matter how many times the venue or the faces filling them changed. Even when I finished my degree. Even after a breakup that caused me to move out of town. I can’t say when the last Thursday occurred, but my best guess is sometime during graduate school. Those two years sucked the joy out of poetry. My voice never seemed good enough or my stanzas deep enough. I hunkered down and tried to fit into the box that meant I was serious and that meant Thursdays were a waste of time. But I didn’t just lose my voice and my confidence during those years, I lost the thing that made me happy, that made me curious and excited to sit down and play around on the page. That change cost me my third space, too.

Those nights at the open mics were full of friends who loved me and people I wanted to know. We crowded at tables and in booths facing the stage. We’d cheer for the poets making their way to the mic and shout out favorite poems for them to recite. For those few hours we were detached from expectation and most responsibility. It didn’t mean those things ceased to exist. What it meant was that this thing, this open mic, was wholly ours.

There were those who tried to turn our collective into profit by hosting events where people had to dress up and pay a cover charge, where guest poets not in the fold were brought in and paid to be “professionals.” Those events had some success, I suppose. But we always came back on Thursdays with no cover charge, no hierarchy, no faux importance. I miss it dearly. I’ve lamented the death of my third spaces. I’ve lamented the death of any true hobbies I’ve had. At some point in the many years since graduate school, hobbies and third spaces became just another thing on my to do list. A hobby became another skill to master and excel at. A third space was a way to make connections with seemingly little competition and at least some common ground.

Now on weekends, I hunker down at my desk editing or writing or responding to requests and messages. I don’t venture out to work at a coffee shop or a co-working space. I don’t make an effort toward community. I end up working a full eight hours or more hidden under the guise of passion. Don’t get me wrong. I am passionate about writing. It’s built into the very fiber of my being, but far too often recently that passion has been pushed out by production.

On my Instagram stories one day I groused about how I’ve sucked the fun out of writing. Long gone are the days of me crafting fanfiction for nothing but pure joy and the comfort of being in community with people who felt exactly the same. I’m still innately curious about the craft of writing, but fun has been swallowed up in word counts and deadlines. If I could just get back to the joy, I muse, all would be in order. But that’s a lie. Fun can’t be just another tool. It needs to stand alone. If I think about getting back to fun with no other thought, I know what comes next. I’ll find a bit of unstructured joy for a little while until sooner than later fun will be nothing more than a trope that I try to squeeze myself into.

Nothing has ever truly replaced Thursday. I’ve joined writing groups and attended retreats. I’ve painted and gotten into photography and reupholstering furniture. But a common thread has always popped up. Those writing groups and retreats, no matter how great, always eventually circled back to producing new work that I wanted to sell and publish. And the photography and painting and refurbishing were good too, but I wasn’t a master at any of them and so eventually the pursuit of those hobbies, and the communities that came along with them, ended up being about excellence and perfection and sometimes competition.

I haven’t found the balance yet. The one between feeling like I’m making the best use of my time and doing something just for experience or the pleasure. I still approach my hobbies like an excited little kid, wanting to shout, “Look at me!” For validation. For community. For fun. I find myself in the midst of posting on social media about what I’m doing, where I am, then backtrack. I ask myself what I’m hoping for. Is this sliver of my life just for me or is it for public consumption? What am I yearning for? An algorithmic boost? An ego stroke? A way to show I’m more than what my feed already conveys? So I end up deleting the half-baked drafts and then obsess about them until I finally settle on keeping things to myself or for the physical or virtual third spaces I’m trying to curate.

Some things are worth sharing but in a small way—personal or intimate. And even if I’ve yet to fully reconcile what I’m looking for, what’s important is that I recognize the yearning for these connections and activities just as much as the need for them. Because those are two different things, right? One is the catalyst to seek out something to hold in your hands or your head. Something weighty that can anchor you when everything around you feels out of control or out of reach. The other is recognizing that something in you requires more in order to thrive.

Maybe I need to find an open mic. I know they have to exist in Philadelphia. The arts scene was one of the things that drew me here and I’m already in the orbit of so many great writers. It’s been years since I’ve written a poem, even longer since I’ve performed one on a stage. I can’t imagine myself walking into a reading and making my way to the mic on day one. It would be like the first time I attended a poetry gathering in undergrad. I’d linger at a back table, nervous and hoping I don’t look like it. There’d be a notebook open in front of me and a pen between my fingers. I’d be planted in that seat, afraid to scrape the chair across the floor or clear my throat.

And if it happens like last time? One of those poets wouldn’t care that I was shy and would take a seat next to me to chat until I came out of my shell. Maybe that’s what I need—a blank space to rebuild something new and the clarity to hold it close.

Athena Dixon is the author of essay collections The Incredible Shrinking Woman and The Loneliness Files and her work appears in publications such as Harper’s Bazaar, Shenandoah, Grub Street, Narratively, and Lit Hub among others. She is a Consulting Editor for Fourth Genre and the Nonfiction/Hybrid Editor for Split/Lip Press.