Birdwatching

A friend of mine today was telling me about a recent invitation she received from a coworker. It was to go birdwatching. Not the Michael Caine in a cheeky state sort of birdwatching, but the literal Nebraska-in-springtime sort of birdwatching. To me this is fascinating--not birdwatching...that sounds boring as hell. No, what's fascinating is that this guy is deeply invested in something that no one else our age cares about. Memorizing the calls of the red-breasted warbler. Training binoculars on an elm tree that houses a bluebird. Wearing flannel. There is no way this guy does this to be unique at cocktail parties--apparently my friend didn't even find out about this hobby until well into knowing the guy. It is not an act, which only serves to make my own hobbies seem a little bit phony and forced. Writing? You and every other 20-something struggling with the 9 to 5 routine. Learning Japanese? So's my anime-watching nephew. Reading up on politics? That's just so DC.

I'm genuinely interested in all of these things, I feel, but there must be some portion of me that developed an interest because a) it was fashionable to do so, and b) I wanted to impress people at cocktail parties.

I raised this point, and my friend argued that me and the birdwatcher would soon not be so different. This is because the inimitable Jeff Ross and I have decided to cultivate a new hobby--we will become researchers and scholars, readers and writers, pontificators and prognosticators, experts, in one new area every four months. We will start this learning project with an in-depth study of the Bolshevik Revolution and its main figures (after four months we will transition to the Prophet Muhammad or the stock market--whichever tickles our fancy at the time). The point my friend was making was, "A hobby of studying the Bolshevik Revolution is just as obscure as the hobby of birdwatching." She's correct on the obscurity of the hobby, but not the drive behind it. Her co-worker just likes watching birds. But I like impressing others. Although Jeff and I have been telling ourselves that this is a self-improvement exercise--and it is--we also desire the recognition that comes with tackling something with which others are not so familiar. In other words, we desire not just to become more knowledgable, but for others to recognize our knowledge. Is that a hobby, or just ego-stroking? Perhaps I'll contemplate this further as I listen to the sounds of the Black-throated Sparrow on CD.