The renowned Spanish author Gómez de la Serna used to say that to be bored is to “kiss death”; by the way, that is also what my friend Tony does before sleeping with his harpy girlfriend. Anyway, sometimes summer is too long. The beach-bar-bed routine is wonderful, but it can be exhausting if you repeat it for more than 40 days.
To break that monotony, different domestic hobbies have been invented that, while you wouldn’t kill for any of them, can entertain you for a while, although they also have their trade-offs. I propose and discuss below some that don’t stain too much (unlike painting the house), are reversible (unlike making household explosives), not too expensive (unlike lobster tossing in the backyard), and shouldn’t destroy your marriage (unlike poker). Let’s see:
Making Dessert
Select your favorite dessert and search for its recipe on the internet. Now check that you have all the ingredients. You don’t have them, obviously, no one does. So your cooking hobby will turn into “going down to the supermarket to buy ingredients I don’t have.” That’s why I hate cooking. You think you’re breaking the routine, but in the end you’re just doing the same old thing: going down to the grocery store. By the time you get home you’ll be too tired to make dessert.
Learn Arabic
Knowledge of languages breaks down cultural barriers and brings you closer to inhospitable places and souls. Arabic is a complex and richly nuanced language. The best way to learn it is to practice it. To do this, take off your shoes, pick up a stone the size of Donald Trump’s testicle, close your eyes, and drop it straight onto one of your big toes. Magic! Do you hear yourself? You’re already cursing in Arabic! Now you just need to learn some manners.
Origami
This is an art that consists of folding paper to give it the shape of different objects. It is a bit complicated, so I recommend that you start with something simple, for example, making a sheet. To make a paper figure in the shape of a sheet, the fold you have to make is none. If you manage not to fold it, you will have obtained a sheet. Now you can move on to the next level, which is to make a figure that represents nothingness: throw the sheet in the trash. The good thing about origami is that it is very intuitive and, I guess, sustainable.
Fly a Kite From Your House
The only important thing if you are going to fly a kite from home is that you know that it is incompatible with the next hobby proposal. Check that you don’t have a neighbor who has reached the next item on this list.
Pilot a Drone
Before you start flying a drone out the window, check that the jerk next door isn’t doing the above.
Put on Your Own Play
Try acting out Hamlet. If Hamlet doesn’t work for you, imagine what might happen if you tried to act out what you have written yourself.
Enjoy TikTok
Spend an afternoon full of satisfaction, joy, and adrenaline on the social network of the Chinese communist regime. To get started, open the app, and hit the “delete account” button. Don’t you feel better? Follow me for more libertarian tips.
Make Your Own Craft Beer
Buy the ingredients, put an apron on and wait in the kitchen. Lay the ingredients out slowly on the floor, put your hands up, stand against the wall, and wait; I’ve already called the police. Beer is sacred, you idiot.
Organizing the Pantry
There are different criteria on how pantries should be organized. My favorite is alphabetically. It may sound stupid, but it’s always easier to find something sorted by letters than when you have breadcrumbs next to flour, and garlic stuck to thyme. You can spend an unforgettable evening alphabetizing your food. You can top it off by having Alphabet pasta for dinner. For dessert, have a bite of Quixote.
Walking An Egg
Stand at one end of the house. Bite a soup spoon with your teeth and keep it (the spoon) parallel to the ground. Now put an egg on top of the spoon and try to get to the other end of the house without dropping it. Now you grab a mop and a scouring pad and start scrubbing the carpet, I reckon it will take you most of the afternoon. Note: you have to be really bored to do this one. Note 2: if you’re going to do this, refer to “Receiving a visit from the fire department.”
Start a Diary
No one, except psychopaths or writers (which are synonyms), continues writing a diary after starting it. So if you don’t want your journal to look dreary, I recommend that you write the next three weeks on the first day. The important thing is that you then make sure that you follow through on the plans and experiences you have written in the diary, otherwise you will have to rewrite it, and that is no longer a hobby but a chore. Writer’s word.
Clean the Skirting Boards Around the House
Try not to use every single activity that was designed to punish children with.
Fix Things in the House
As time goes by, houses deteriorate, broken handles, light bulbs that don’t work, closets that don’t close, or damp spots on the wall. Broken handles are broken, so they cannot be fixed. Changing a light bulb is a high-risk activity without adult supervision, but if an adult is present, you can ask him or her to change the bulb.
Closets that don’t close allow you to keep clothes from smelling like a closet, so don’t close them, lest the closet should start smelling of clothes. And damp stains on the wall could be esoteric manifestations of ancestors who inhabited your home long ago. Try to identify them in a photograph, learn their names, turn off the light, light a couple of candles, and communicate with them. If they do not answer, they are damp stains: call the painter.
Receiving a Visit From the Fire Department
This is my neighbor’s favorite hobby, especially since she broke up with her boyfriend and is lonely. To get firefighters to come you need to know that there are three things they are deeply attracted to: fire, people trapped in places, and calendars. For calendars you need a charitable cause and a photographer — and anything charitable is expensive — and getting trapped is claustrophobic, whereas fire is easy.
Men have known how to make fire since at least the Stone Age, so you don’t need me to tell you how to do it at home, and I wouldn’t do it unless without my lawyer present. One piece of advice my neighbor gave me: when the firefighters come around, be very careful about stepping on hoses. They might not be hoses.
READ MORE from Itxu Diaz: