A new hobby

Dusted this one off ‘cause it is appropriate for this week.

A hobby is supposed to be something you enjoy doing, that you do in your spare time (or on the job when the boss ain’t around), that you can share with other folks. A hobby should be, ideally, relaxing.

I’ve pretty much got all the first part whipped. I’ve just gotta figure out how to make my new hobby relaxing. Stress is my new hobby. As Maria and I are acquiring The Sylvester Local Newspaper and working some other stuff, stress has soared.

Considering that I’m stressed a whole lot of the time, I figure it’s about time I learned to enjoy it and the best way to do that is to make it a hobby.

I can get stressed at a moment’s notice. Just getting out of bed these days is stressful. Working at a newspaper has always been stressful. Now that journalists are trusted less than a used car salesman, it’s worse.

8 a.m. approaches and with it, comes the rest of the crew. More stress and yet another chance to share my new hobby. We all get along very well around this place, in fact, we’re more like a family than co-employees. This means that we all feel free to get on each other nerves, make rude comments and generally annoy each other into a frazzled bundle of stress by the time the paper actually leaves the building.

Fortunately, now that stress is my new hobby, I will enjoy this much more.

After the paper leaves, I immediately start worrying whether or not we left something out that should have been in or put something in that should have been left out. More stress.

As this is my hobby, I can now share the stress with everybody else by making them wonder if they left something out that should have been in or put something in that should have been left out. Stress is also a hobby that fits perfectly when the boss is around. As I am the boss and I am always around myself, I never get a break.

Seriously. Don’t you get stressed when the boss shows up out of the blue with a grimace on his face instead of a smile? Or, if you have one of those Dilbert bosses, a smile is much more cause for stress than a grimace.

Being a reporter, editor and a writer, I’m actually on the job all the time and so have no spare time. This should mean that I have no hobbies. But stress can fit right in.

News doesn’t happen on a regular 9-5 schedule. I might go out with my family to a fancy restaurant and my cell phone rings. City Hall has just exploded, a train has derailed, the mayor has just announced he is a communist and the high school Literary Team just won the national championship and the adviser wants to know if I can be at the Civic Center five minutes ago to take a picture.

This has not happened yet, but it certainly could and I worry about that when I have a spare minute. This stress is a quiet, unassuming stress that lies around under the table, always there but just out of reach of a swift kick until something happens and it leaps out from under the table like a Doberman with a toothache.

Now that stress is my hobby, I can enjoy this and certainly find much more time to fit this stress into my schedule. With a little luck, some stress and some gullible people, I could make some money off this. I could do infomercials on late-night TV, talking about stress as a hobby and sell videos telling people how to enjoy their stress. Of course, these infomercials and videos cost a mint to produce and I’m generally broke.

I betcha I can even launch a YouTube or TikTok channel teaching people how to enjoy stress.

Figuring all that is creating more stress.

But I’m enjoying it now and that’s what matters.