I’ve been spending three hours a week on this. Is it a waste of time?
Last night, my partner Sam brought me a glass of iced peach tea into the back spare room I’ve turned into half storage, half weird hobby nook. I was sitting cross-legged on the floor, peeling the outer bark off fallen oak branches I dragged home from the curb two weeks ago, the ones that came down in that thunderstorm that knocked out our power for four hours and forced us to eat cold boxed mac and cheese for dinner. He leaned against the doorframe, sipped his own tea, and said the thing I’ve been half expecting someone to say for a month now: “You know you can buy a 50-pack of plastic plant markers for three dollars on Amazon, right?”
He didn’t say it mean. He just said it, like it was a fact, which it is. I nodded, didn’t look up from the stick I was working on, and that’s when the question bumped around loud in my head anyway. Is this a waste of time?
I picked the branches up after the storm when I was walking our beagle, Mabel. She’d dragged me off the sidewalk to sniff a rotting squirrel, and there was this whole pile of good thick branches stacked by the curb for the city garbage truck to pick up. I grabbed three armfuls, got bark dust all down the front of my jeans, and Mabel decided this was a new game. She yanked the thickest, nicest one right out of my arm and took off down the street, her tail flagging, me chasing her in the fuzzy socks I’d thrown on that morning because I couldn’t find my sneakers. A retiree walking his cat (yes, his cat, on a leash) laughed at me. I was red-faced and winded by the time I got my branch back. That’s 20 minutes I’ll never get back, right there, just chasing a dog down the street for a stupid stick.
A couple weeks back, I had a big report due for my boss that I’d been putting off. Instead of sitting at the dining table knocking it out like I was supposed to, I hid back here cutting branches into six-inch lengths with a little hand saw, sanding each one down with three different grits of sandpaper, getting splinters in my thumb that I still can’t dig out. I got the report done 10 minutes before the team Zoom call, typing so fast my fingers cramped, and my boss commented halfway through that I looked “a little scattered.” That could’ve gone bad. That could’ve messed up my end of year review, all because I wanted to make fancy sticks to label my 10 tomato plants and 4 basil bushes in our tiny 8×10 backyard. That’s a waste, right? There’s a tangible consequence there.
I keep thinking about my dad, when I was a kid. He spent every weekend for three years restoring old tube radios out of our garage. All the uncles would come over, drink beer, and needle him about it. “Why bother when you can get a CD player for 20 bucks?” they’d say. “This is just a waste of good time.” He finished one Philco from 1952 once, spent three weeks on it, and when he plugged it in it only picked up two stations: one was all market reports and hog futures, the other was a preacher yelling about hell fire. He still put it on the shelf in the living room, and would twist the dial for 10 minutes every night before bed. I thought it was so stupid back then. I couldn’t wrap my head around wasting all that time for something that didn’t even work right. Now I get it, sort of. But not all the way.
My sister came over last weekend, saw the stack of finished sticks on the counter, and counted them. Twenty. “You have twelve plants,” she said. “Why do you need twenty markers?” She’s not wrong. I just kept cutting and sanding after I had enough, because it was nice. I gave three to Mrs. Henderson next door for her herb garden, and she said they’re cute, but I saw the plastic ones she already had tucked in between the parsley, they work fine. They don’t fall apart or get splinters in your hand when you weed. What’s the point of extra wooden markers, anyway?
I did that time audit thing everyone talks about a couple weeks ago, where you write down everything you do for a month to see where your time goes. I added up all the hours I spent on these sticks and other dumb, unproductive hobbies this month: eleven hours. Eleven whole hours. That’s a weekend trip to the lake we’ve been talking about going to for months. That’s finishing that graphic design course I paid 150 bucks for last year and haven’t touched. That’s cleaning out the garage that’s so full of junk we can’t fit the bike in there. When I added that number up, I sat there and thought, yep. That’s a waste. That’s definitely a waste.
But then, let’s be honest. What would I have done with those eleven hours if I wasn’t out here messing with sticks? Before I started this, I’d spend every evening after Mabel’s walk and dinner scrolling on my phone. I’d watch 12 minute videos of people reorganizing their linen closets, I’d scroll through arguments about the latest streaming show that I don’t even care about, I’d refresh my work email even though I know no one’s answering at 8pm. I’ve wasted way more than eleven hours a month that way, and at the end of it I just feel tense and hungry and like I didn’t actually do anything I wanted to do. Don’t get me wrong, I still scroll after I’m done sanding sticks most nights. I don’t somehow replaced all the bad wasting with good productive wasting. I just added this thing on top.
Last Tuesday, I stepped on that one really nice marker I made, the one with the little heart-shaped grain I was saving for the cherry tomatoes. I dropped it when I was digging a hole for the plant, stepped right on the end of it, and it snapped clean in half. I stood there in the dirt holding the two pieces, covered in mud, and I was actually annoyed. That was an hour of my life, gone, for a stick that broke before I even got to use it. That’s as big a waste as it gets, right?
I’m going back in there after I finish this cup of coffee. I still have eight sticks left to sand, and then I gotta burn the names into them with that cheap little wood burning tool I bought at the craft store, the one that almost burned a hole in my throw rug last week. Is it a waste of time? I don’t have a clean answer. Half the time I think yeah, obviously. It’s a bunch of useless work for something I don’t even need. The other half, I think about all the other stuff I waste time on that no one calls a waste. All the meetings that could’ve been an email. All the Christmas gifts I buy that people re-gift within a year. All the time I spend folding laundry that my kid just dumps out of the drawer an hour later. What’s the difference, really? This thing, the sanding and the cutting and the peeling bark, it’s the only thing I’ve done in months that I’m not doing for a grade, or a promotion, or to impress someone, or to check a box off a list. It’s just mine. Even if it’s a waste. I think I’m okay with that, for now.
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