Some people have one big talent which they master or even make a career out of it. While others like me have random hobbies which were never mastered or eventually forgotten as life happened.

I can’t read sheet music, compose original tunes or name chords/scales very well, but I was always able to play songs on the piano once I heard them. I usually played the songs I liked alone, or at times in social gatherings. I sometimes wonder if there was anything I could have done with that, with some kind of training. I guess I’ll never know.

I have an on-and-off relationship with dance, with fragments of classical training from childhood still remaining, mixed with modern moves from other dance forms. I have phases where I dance a lot, alone or in gatherings; or phases where I feel anxiety about it and become unable to move at all. And this time it seems like the Off phase will go on forever.

I randomly picked up digital painting one day, starting with colouring on penup and going on to convert photos of real people into paintings. I can’t create original paintings out of nowhere, but the photo-paintings or sketches seemed to be going well for a year until… I lost interest. And it became yet another abandoned hobby.

Sometimes I wonder if these hobbies are just old friends who left, or if they’re waiting for me to return someday. Or maybe they’ve already done what they had to: helped me find a few different sides of myself along the way.