The hobbies I'm shedding in 2025
Being informed and well-read is so last year
I listened to a useful Ezra Klein podcast where he interviewed Oliver Burkeman about burnout. I know Ezra can really get too nerdy for even a nerd like me, but I recommend this one. In it, they call out people who are “political hobbyists,” a term for those of us who devour all the designed-for-outrage Red vs. Blue news. I am trying very hard to not be that person anymore. Hobby #1 I intend to shed.
I’m a big fan of Burkeman. He was a self-help columnist for The Guardian, then wrote a terrific book called 4,000 Weeks. I wrote about it here. It’s sort of the anti-self help book. Speaking of anti-self help, on the podcast Burkeman recommends a book by Joan Tollifson that has my new favorite title: Death: The End of Self-Improvement.
Quitting mainstream news is Hobby #2. Instead of dry January1 I'm devoting my will power to cutting back on my The New York Times time. I read it too much. I’m tiresome. Plus, I’d like to sidestep the inevitable cavalcade of Trump-related freakouts (see, Greenland). But now Los Angeles is on fire, so this hobby is hard to quit.
There’s nothing I can add to the conversation about the devastation, but in his new Substack, Paul Krugman2 makes an incredibly sharp economic case for why the whole nation has an interest in helping LA recover. Basically, California subsidizes most of the rest of the United States. California is one of the states that gives more in taxes than they get back from the Federal government. I know I'm trying to not be a political hobbyist anymore but this is relevant when Republican senators squawk about helping a state like California recover from a natural disaster. By the way, all but two red states are a drain on the federal coffers. Only Utah and Wyoming give back more than they get.
Hobby #3 is being less precious about what goes in The Pithy. Not that my posts are all such exquisite gems, mind you. But I do overthink it all. In that vein, I give you:
January Grab Bag
As we ate our way through Christmas Day (French toast, chocolate oranges, bottomless cookie jar, lasagna) we showed the kids “Casablanca” and “The Graduate.” These two movies are truly masterpieces. Our kids loved them, and the stories felt current and resonant in ways that surprised me. I loved that even though we did pause “Casablanca” at moments to explain the historical context, the themes of believing in something bigger than yourself or heroism for an ideal we did not need to explain. And the way my about-to-graduate son responded to The Graduate, a 60-year-old movie about being his age somehow calmed me down. It definitely was a balm for him. He told me that if you substitute the word “AI” for “plastics” you basically have him at any multigenerational event.
Speaking of AI, did you know that every AI search you do costs/wastes about 8 oz. of water? Wild to consider how goofing around with ChatGPT at your desk is essentially contributing to the climate crisis, but there ya’ go. Everything is connected.
Before all our goods are tossed in the back of a UPS truck, they are probably shipped across an ocean. This super interesting article, by the great Virginia Heffernan, got me thinking about that and about Marina Hadjipateras, a most unconventional shipping heiress/VC funder.
Also being shipped across oceans: hordes of people on cruises. I read a crazy good article about a group of passengers deliberately and knowingly left behind by their cruise ship on the tiny African Island of São Tomé. The ship had no liability whatsoever. After a harrowing odyssey at tremendous personal expense, they shockingly can’t wait to go on another cruise vacation.
In addition to news consumption and political hobbyism, another hobby I seem to be shedding is reading new fiction. Here’s my ungenerous take on a few books that made the best of the year lists:
I tried to listen to The Wide Wide Sea by Hampton Sides but it bored me. Maybe because years ago I read a far more entertaining book about Captain Cook called Blue Latitudes, by Tony Horwitz. It’s way more funny and lighthearted, but still informative considering I still remembered enough of the actual history to lose interest in Sides’s book. [Sides’s people would like me to mention that his book is not at all intended to be funny or lighthearted, so to say that Horwitz’s is ‘way more’ is sort of unfair.]
I read Louise Erdrich’s new novel, The Mighty Red and it was good but kinda baggy. For instance, one night I picked it up to finish it and realized that I already had finished it. And forgotten. It isn’t that there weren’t great characters and some magnificent scenes. What she writes about the decimation of the natural world by corporate farming is reason enough to read the book. I mean, I wear loose sweats and an oversized sweater all the time, too. Baggy isn’t necessarily bad? She’s a beautiful writer, one of my all-time favorites, so whatever shortcomings this novel had I still think Erdrich outshines nearly every other living writer. But this in my opinion was not her best.
I read a book called Colored Television that is on several best of the year lists and I think that’s a reach. It’s not a bad book; I barely put it down and read the whole thing. But. It builds with mounting dread in many wonderfully wicked ways then cheats us of a satisfying denouement. Also, it’s racialist in a way I found tiresome (and as the only white person in my home I feel okay about going out on a limb and making that statement. I’m opening myself to attack, I know).
I was almost halfway through Reboot by Justin Taylor—another best of 2024—then decided to put it down. Again, Reboot isn't bad, it’s just a little too overheated and frenetic in its tone for me right now. You’re inside the mind of a former teen tv star who is bravely trying to contain his alcoholism while helping his ex-wife/former co-star reboot their hit show, which was like The OC meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I think this book deserves attention and praise. But not my attention. I’m not in the mood.
After starting and failing with so many of the books on the best of lists, I took a lesson from our Christmas day movies and went back to a classic. I’m re-reading Anna Karenina. So far, it holds up.
Because of Trump, I’d like to retain access to the liquor cabinet.
