Mini Ensayo

Qué hay en las slides

1. Slide 1

   An essay in five slides

   On being ordinary at things you love

   Why the hobbies we keep are the ones we never got good at.

2. Slide 2

   Somewhere, we decided hobbies need a point.

   A run must be training for something. A sketchbook must become a shop. A garden must be content. We took the things we did for joy and gave them quarterly targets.

3. Slide 3

   Being bad at something is a kind of freedom.

   Nobody expects anything of a mediocre pianist. You can play the same four songs for ten years, badly, with the windows open, and no one is disappointed. That is rare in a grown-up life.

4. Slide 4

   The ordinary hours are the whole point.

   Not the recital, the finished quilt or the marathon photo. The Tuesday evening with flour on your hands. Those hours were never a step toward something else. They were the something.

5. Slide 5

   What are you happily, gloriously ordinary at?

   Tell me in the replies. I’ll go first: watercolour, nine years, still can’t paint a sky.