Eight Non-Bookish Hobbies

I'm linking up with That Artsy Reader Girl for another Top Ten Tuesday.

1. Acting
It's been a few years now, but I tried out for a number of community theater plays and landed a couple of very minor roles. Assuming that my local theater survives the pandemic, I hope (when my kids are a little older) to try out for some more roles!

2. Dancing
I adore ballroom dancing and line dancing, and right before the pandemic hit I discovered contra dancing, which was a great way to get my fix of partner dancing without having to have a partner who's also interested in dancing. This will probably be one of the last things to come back after the pandemic subsides (lots of people, particularly older people, in close contact with rotating partners), but I'm looking forward to it because I miss it!

3. Job search coaching
I absolutely love helping people with their job searches. I tried unsuccessfully to turn this into a business, and now I've just gone back to happily volunteering my time for friends, family, and acquaintances, as well as volunteering with Upwardly Global. I read Ask a Manager religiously. It's so satisfying to help someone land a job they really want!

4. Learning/practicing American Sign Language
I've been taking ASL classes off and on for the last five years or so. I haven't taken a class in almost a year now and I tried unsuccessfully to find an online Deaf/HoH teacher I liked and could afford, but I've at least been keeping up with my receptive skills by watching a video in ASL every day (not counting all the Deaf TikTok creators I follow!).

5. Playing board games
This is one of the few hobbies my husband and I have in common, and we've acquired more two-player games in the past couple years, which has come in handy since we've had to stop hosting our regular in-person game nights with friends every few months. (Seriously, this TTT topic is reminding me of just how many of my hobbies the pandemic has paused...)

6. Playing piano
I took piano lessons for a few years as a kid and eventually quit to focus on other things. My parents have always told me that I can have my piano from their house when I'm ready for it, but it'll be a couple years still until we have a house and also my only time to play is at night when my kids are sleeping. After staying with my parents this summer, though, I got back into it, and I ended up buying myself a proper keyboard at home. Now I can put in headphones in the evenings and practice!

7. Podcasting
This is definitely my biggest (i.e., most time-consuming) hobby outside of reading. I co-host Blessed Are the Feminists and in addition to doing the interviews for each episode I do all the administrative work (scheduling the interviews, uploading the finished episode file and writing the show notes, scheduling posts on our site and social media) and do transcripts of every episode. It's a lot of work but it's been so fun and rewarding to do!

8. Sharing coming out stories
Finally, I also run the website When I Came Out, which I launched in 2012 when this kind of site format was all the rage (e.g., Texts from Last Night, Overheard in New York). Amazingly, people just keep submitting stories for me to post, and the site now has almost 2,200 stories!

What are your hobbies?

Looking back:
One year ago I was reading: King of the Murgos, Girt, and Whistling Vivaldi
Five years ago I was reading: Goodbye, Columbus and A Snicker of Magic
Ten years ago I was reading: The Back of the Napkin