I have a problem.
I’m a little bit of a hoarder.
I’m obsessed with flashlights and multitools of any kind. TSA confiscated a pocket knife from me last time I flew—could have sworn I got all the blades out of my backpack, but guess not. It’s fine; it was like $5 from Walmart and I’ve got a million others.
I own an inordinate amount of nail polish and a ridiculous number of leggings. As I was typing this, I realized just how many pairs of sunglasses and wireless earbuds I also have.
I also do own a lot of shoes. But despite the title of this post, I’m not talking about shoes, or even tangible things at all. I’m talking about hobbies. I have too many interests. We’ve all heard the saying, “If the shoe fits, wear it.” Sure, it can have kind of a negative connotation, but I think it applies here. It has to do with things that pertain to you, which include skills/talents and interests.
Well, what if you have a lot of shoes and they all fit? You obviously can’t wear them all at once, but are you going to just throw away the ones you don’t wear as often? That wouldn’t make any sense. They’re still perfectly good shoes. But some people might tell you it’s pointless to have so many shoes if you’re not actually going to wear all of them. Just focus on your favorites, the most comfortable pairs. They’re better for your feet, right? Riiiiiight?
Sure, if we were truly talking about shoes.
I often describe myself as a “___________ nerd.” Most recently, it’s been “analytics” and “geography.” This is something I’ve struggled with for a lot of my life, especially when it came time to head for college and choose a major. I had so many small interests but no big ones I could confidently say I wanted to devote the rest of my life to. After spending a year in software engineering, I transferred to my school’s IT department because, while it consisted of some of the same aspects (e.g. coding), it offered a much wider variety of classes (networking, troubleshooting, systems analysis, database design, even public speaking…Lord knows I needed that!). And with a health information emphasis, it still gave me a wide variety of opportunities in the workforce. I felt the need to give myself plenty of options, since my interests change on what sometimes feels like a weekly basis.
WRITING
I suppose it’s fairly obvious that WRITING is one of my interests. I was just telling someone the other day that nobody really inspired me to start writing; I’ve just always loved both reading and telling stories. I remember sitting down and trying to start writing a mystery story sometime in elementary school. During my Jurassic Park phase in 5th grade, I wrote fanfiction starring characters from the Jurassic Park III PC game “Danger Zone” (my friend and I were totally obsessed). In junior high, I wrote Star Wars fanfiction with other friends. One of my favorite memories in high school was a character development segment we went through in my 10th grade English class. We had to create an original character following a fairly in-depth guide (I kept that thing and I’ve still got it around here somewhere…) and then we had to write up an outline for a 300+ page novel starring that character. We didn’t actually have to write the novel, though I remember thinking, “Oh my gosh, 300 pages? I could never do that.” HA. That was back when my family was staying up until 2 AM marathoning “24” like crazy people, so naturally my story involved FBI agents and Serbian terrorists and plane hijackings. My teacher probably thought I was insane. Not sure what happened to that outline. Sometimes I really wish I still had it.
Pencil drawing of Kara “Starbuck” Thrace from BSG, circa July 2012
ART
Before I started writing more regularly, ART was my number one interest. I’ve been drawing people and portraits for just about as long as I could hold a pencil (needless to say the quality has improved drastically over the years). And I went through that phase all 8-year-old girls do of drawing nothing but horses. These days I’ve migrated pretty much exclusively to digital art, mostly because it’s faster and not as messy as pencils, but also because it’s a lot more interesting to see concepts in color than in grayscale. I do all the concept art for my own books, and I still occasionally take a small commission or two if I’m not totally bogged down with other stuff (but LOL when is that?).
I love typography and graphic design too, and for a while I was convinced that’s what I wanted to go to school for. Obviously that didn’t happen, but I still manage to make time for it as a hobby.
3D MODELING
Building off of art, 3D MODELING is something I’ve always been interested in but have never really had the time or patience to learn. I think I’ve downloaded every free modeling software known to man, as well as the free trials of some of the expensive ones. Once I even invested in a copy of an older version of Poser, but learning it was just never a priority compared to writing and art. I think 3D modeling would come in really handy for designing ships, buildings, weapons, and some of the other futuristic stuff I end up writing about.
Ah, the good old days when I could do this without breaking my back. And they say middles don’t play back row…
SPORTS and fitness
SPORTS have also been a major interest for the better part of my life. My mom coached volleyball on and off since before I was born so I was exposed to the game early on (got my first ball-in-the-face at 3 months old 😉). I started playing volleyball in elementary and continued through high school. I was First Team All-State my senior year, MVP of the state tournament, and Player of the Year in my school’s league. I still hold the blocks-per-match, blocks-per-season, and kills-per-match school records; held the kills-per-season record too until my younger sister broke it. I was offered the chance to play at two different colleges, one of which was the one I ended up attending, but decided against it (still don’t regret it). For 9 seasons, I returned as an assistant coach/statistician at my old high school and would play competitive volleyball with some of the other 20-somethings from around town on the weekends. I also did track for one season—threw javelin and ran the 400m and 4x400 relay. Even though I never played basketball, I’ve always loved watching it, especially at the college level. March Madness is one of my favorite times of year. And then of course whenever the Olympics roll around, I’m suddenly a fan of every sport on the planet.
I’ve also become a little bit of a gym rat over the past few years and love to start my day with an intense cardio resistance workout. When the pandemic first hit, I made it my goal to come out of it (whenever that is, right? 🙄) in better shape than I went into it, and I’ve certainly accomplished that already. I love the feeling of getting to the office in the morning and already having a sense of accomplishment about the day. I like challenging myself to be better and earning my results.
The code for a single form on the application was 65 pages long. Really glad I didn’t have to print it…
DATA
I’m kind of a numbers nerd. Not a math nerd, mind you. I love DATA. Statistics. Databases and reporting are my jam. I love being able to take information, sort it in a meaningful way, and then present it in a visually-appealing fashion. Insights dashboards for my website? I could stare at that stuff all day. Graphs and charts? I eat them up. Part of it probably has to do with the fact that I’m secretly a control freak. I like to know things, and I like facts. Those aspects of IT really appealed to me. That and the fact that I do enjoy programming, although by now I’m horribly out of practice. For my senior project in college, I wrote a Windows-based application for keeping volleyball stats on a laptop instead of using paper and clipboards, and it turned out pretty awesome if I do say so myself.
GAMING
Despite the fact that I’ve now considered myself a gamer for a number of years, GAMING is a fairly new hobby in the grand scheme of things simply because I lacked the means for a long time. I dabbled in little things like Zoo Tycoon and Runescape and those Nancy Drew RPGs back in the day, and I never passed up an opportunity to play Super Smash Bros. or Mario Kart at friends’ houses. My first major games were the two Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic installments, and I only played them for the first time in the winter of 2010, just to put things into perspective (up until shortly before that point, my home PC was running Windows 98 with dial-up internet, ha). Those of course introduced me to BioWare and subsequently Mass Effect, which I’d actually been aware of for quite a while and wanted desperately to play. And where would I be if I hadn’t gotten into Portal? My life would be incredibly boring, that’s for sure. Mass Effect and Portal in particular actually helped me get through one of the toughest times in my life. Shortly after, I invested in a refurbished Xbox 360 and got into Assassin’s Creed and Fallout, and things only escalated from there. My to-play pile continues to grow and currently contains Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, Red Dead Redemption 2, Star Wars Squadrons, and Jedi Fallen Order, but I don’t dare play any of these until Embers is done because I will become useless.
La Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence
GEOGRAPHY
Another interest that actually kind of got rekindled by gaming is GEOGRAPHY. And not just geography—languages and foreign cultures in general. One of the first books I remember getting was this little pocket atlas I called my “map book.” I was 4 or 5 and it was just one of those free gifts that came with a NatGeo subscription or something. I was obsessed with that thing and always took it on road trips. Half the pages were falling out after so much use. Maps in general have always fascinated me, and geography was one of my favorite social studies classes in high school. I got really interested in European geography after watching the Bourne movies and became convinced I was going to learn German if it killed me. Then, after playing through the Assassin’s Creed games and the Ezio trilogy in particular, I became enamored with all things Italy and started teaching myself Italian using Duolingo (which I highly recommend because it’s both free and actually useful). It’s been really fun to replay those games or watch certain movies with Italian dialogue and actually understand some of what’s being said. Posso leggere l'italiano più facilmente di posso parlarlo o scriverlo. Non so neanche se questo è totalmente corretto 😅.
MUSIC
MUSIC is another thing I can say I’m really interested in. Thinking back on it, I’m not sure if I’ve ever really had a favorite band or singer. I’ve always just liked certain songs from a wide variety of people. One thing I’ve always loved though is movie soundtracks. There was just something about the instrumental stuff that affected me more than music with actual lyrics. Then I discovered trailer music (actually thanks to watching the Mass Effect 2 launch trailer back when I was moping over not being able to play it and hearing “Heart of Courage” by Two Steps From Hell for the first time). That became a very slippery slope and these days I listen almost exclusively to movie/TV/game soundtracks, trailer music, and instrumental covers (à la Lindsey Stirling, The Piano Guys, etc.). I’ve never taken piano lessons, but I have a basic understanding of scales and I’ve printed out a lot of sheets for some of this music over the years. I taught myself the majority of the Phantom of the Opera theme back in the day, and two of my friends and I would play it in three different octaves all on the same piano. But, like 3D modeling, a lot of this has gotten put on the back burner in favor of other things I’d rather do, and I remain content to just listen to music rather than play it.
So, back to shoes. As you can see, I have a lot of them, and they all fit. They all pertain to me. They’re all things I’m interested in. But I obviously can’t wear all of them at once, and some of them definitely get worn more often than others. I have this pair of actual shoes I really love. They’ve got about a 4-inch heel, so I’m roughly 6’2” when I wear them and it’s incredibly awesome. But I can’t wear them for more than a couple of hours (sometimes less if I’m doing a lot of standing or walking around) or else my feet start killing me. Am I going to get rid of them just because of that? Of course not. I’ll set them aside and save them for a time when I need them, maybe a fancy dinner or a presentation I have to give. Yeah, I’ll probably have to dust them off a bit and polish them up, but they’re still there.
You may be wondering if there’s been a point to all of this. The answer is yes; I do tend to just ramble sometimes, but there’s a method to my madness here. Throughout this while writing and publishing adventure, I’ve seen an alarming number of authors say they’ve “had to quit ____________ to focus on writing.” I’m always really sad to hear that. Sure, we all deal with time constraints, but if you love doing something, you shouldn’t have to give it up. You can always make time for it. I would know—I wrote the majority of Ronan while going to school full time, during which I completed the aforementioned senior project, and I still managed to sneak some art, gaming, and volleyball in there. It’s a little trickier now with a day job because that takes up more hours in the day than school did, but I make it work, albeit slowly.
I like to think that out of all my interests, writing is the priority, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to sacrifice all the other things. In fact, I’ve always done what I can to augment my writing WITH those other interests. Art and graphic design have of course come in handy in the realm of marketing my books; I’ve designed all my own covers, as well as posters, bookmarks, business cards, and all my social media graphics. My love of data has made it really fun to track sales and website insights and see how I can improve those things. And of course the publishing experience has given me the opportunity to interact with people all over the world, so my inner geography nerd has a lot of fun with that. There was a point in time where, aside from the U.S., my biggest Kindle markets were Australia and Germany, and I thought that was really interesting. Music has been a huge help as well. I don’t typically listen while I’m actually writing, but I often have my Hans Zimmer Pandora station playing while I’m editing or working on concept art. The gym is prime brainstorming time, and then I always have to rewind whatever show I’m watching after I realize my mind has been wandering. And gaming is something I have in common with a lot of other writers I’ve met, so that has honestly helped from a networking standpoint.
TL;DR? I’m going to keep all of my shoes and wear them whenever I can. Yeah, I have a lot of them, but I never know when they might come in handy.
