Hobbies are Neat-O

Okay, so I took the poll off of my blog. It seemed that most of the world logged in to place their votes. At least 0.000000001% of the world's population, at any rate, give or take a fraction of a person, and for that I am thankful.

As I sit back, basking in the radiance of my polling success, I have to ask myself, "What is it exactly that I do to keep from going insane?' Well, that's what I'm here to tell you. Ready?

Get a hobby. Yes, that's the key to not going insane. Really. There are some auxiliaries to hobbies, like not lying to your wife and eating well, which we will discuss later, but first we must cover the topic of hobbies briefly before moving on.

A hobby can be anything from knitting to spacing out in the woods. I prefer the latter, of course, and don't get to participate in that hobby as much as I would like, yet try to do it as much as possible. We take what we can get. Other hobbies include, hiking, weight-lifting (don't recommend, unless you have exhausted all other hobby ideas), sailing, model-building, studying the history of guerilla-warfare tactics in Central America...you get the idea.

After you establish this new hobby as a necessary and regular part of your life, go ahead and be wild and maybe take on a new hobby. Who knows, some day you might be eighty years-old with a schedule of hobbies so extensive that you have to hire an art student to come help you finish writing that last song about the time you floated down the Mississippi, playing bluegrass, with the circus clown and the three-legged dog you found on the side of the road. So, pull on your boots and gitter dun, as they say in North Florida.

Okay, so now we can cover some auxiliaries to hobbies, in regards to maintaining sanity. I mentioned not lying to your wife (or husband), which I feel the benefits are self-explanatory. Same with eating right. So, do those along with your hobby and you are well on your way to maintaining what sanity you have left.

Another auxiliary to a bright, shining hobby is being one's self, at all times. Try being an asshole, no matter the cost, if you must. Now, here me out. Being an asshole, if that's the only genuine expression you can muster, until of course you are alienated by the human race, is an important method to not going insane. At some point, however, you will alienate the whole human race, at which time you have to soften your disposition so that you can build new relationships from the ground up. What you will be left with is nothing but a solid foundation. I say this because if you tell people how you feel and that you are miserable about the economy and the systematic destruction of beauty in our world, then they will know where you truly stand, get freaked out and bail. As a result, once you finally get desperate enough to lighten up, you will not have amassed a population of shallow robots who would rather sell you out than talk about real things that they experience and that you experience, helping each other maintaining a real grasp on reality once and for all. You will have something solid.
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Hobbies, honesty, health (alliteration aside), genuineness and stability are all good. The greatest of these all are hobbies. So fare ye well and take on that hobby today. Who knows? You could be the next curling champion of the world.

Until next time and peace and love to all!

Your compadre,

Pablo Vida