Blog Challenge Day 11: My hobbies

Hobbies. Everyone has plenty of them. Below I will list my main ones.

1.) Dancing

This is definitely my biggest hobby. This is what I’ve been doing for as long as I can remember. According to my mom, I took my first dance class when I was six. She enrolled me in dance classes, because she felt I should do some kind of sport and from before I could even walk I was apparently moving along to music. Dancing seemed a very natural choice to her. Which it was.

I love to dance. Period. If I can’t dance, I go crazy. Whenever I miss a class or when the school is on summer break I sometimes feel like climbing the walls. I even considered going to a dance academy when I was younger, but opted out as I was afraid that going pro would take the joy out of dancing for me.

I’ve been enrolled in jazz dance/ jazz ballet/ jazz/musical classes since the beginning. Since a few years, I’ve added hip hop classes to the routine. I love both, but I’m definitely better at the jazz stuff than at the hip hop stuff. I simply have no flow. I do love the routines though and it’s a completely different way of moving your body as well and it’s a challenge. That’s why I like it so much. Jazz class is hardly a real challenge for me anymore. All I can do is to try to kick or jump higher or double or triple my turns. But that’s fun because I can really get into the movement and try to work with the music more. Plus my dance teachers are great too!

2.) Reading

I’ve been loving books for as long as I can remember as well. However, I do feel I should read more. I have to be in a certain mood to read. And I’m simply not always in that mood, but when I am, I can finish a 300 page book within a day or even quicker, depending on the book.

Still, I read plenty. My favorite books feature slightly twisted or weird characters, who have a unique and often absurd view on the world. I like books that challenge me to see things differently. Hence, my love for novels with Gothic themes: from Edgar Allen Poe, to ghost stories, to the Twilight series and other vampire novels. Other books I love, could be dubbed as ‘coming of age’ novels. I simply enjoy books where the main character(s) goes through major changes in life/ the story.

I blogged about my favorite book a few days ago, as it was also one of my topics on this list, but here are some of my other favorites:

• Flannery O’Connor – Wise Blood
• Bram Stoker – Dracula
• Richard Matheson – I Am Legend
• John Niven – Kill Your Friends
• Carlos Ruiz Zafon – The Shadow of the Wind

3.) Listening to music

In the short time this blog has existed, plenty of blogs have been about music. I listen to music all the time. At work, on the train, at home. If I had a radio in my bathroom, I would also be listening to music while I’m in the shower.

It’s something that I’ve been doing since I was a little girl. My parents were always listening to music. Either, they were listening to the radio, or they would be playing CDs or records. My dad turned Sunday mornings into: ‘my music hour’. This meant he would play all of ‘his’ music for about an hour, mostly stuff from the late 60s and the early 70s. In the mean time, he’d be quizzing me and my brother: who is this? what’s this song called?. Of course, being kids we didn’t know any of those artists or songs, but by now we do and my dad now gets peeved when he asks us those same questions and we actually know the answer!

It should therefore not be a surprise that I have a lot of music, ranging from country to jazz, from classical to rock, from pop to R&B. I ‘inherited’ my dad’s & uncle’s record collection a few years ago. And especially on dreary autumn or winter days I turn on my old record player and blast some Beatles or Deep Purple. I’ve been listening to records since I was about 7 or 8. That’s when I got my mom’s old record player (bright red, stereo speakers and also capable of playing 78s) and already played my first records. I ended up buying Coldplay’s X&Y in record form, just to add something contemporary to my collection.

On top of that, I appear to be my brother’s walking talking music encyclopedia. Whenever he needs a song, he calls me, sings two lines and expects me to know the song. Amazingly, I get it right more often than not and usually I even have the song in question. In short, if you need any music, just ask me, there’s a good chance I having it floating around on a shelf or on my hard drive.

4.) Shopping

Can you even list this as a hobby? In my case, I think I can. I love to shop. I’m not at a shopaholic stage just yet if you ask me, but I do shop quite a bit.

I shop clothes, make up, CDs, books, etc. It’s like this never ending cycle: whenever I feel I have enough of one thing, there is always something that I decided I ‘need’ to have. I know very well that I probably don’t really need it all. But, hey, I can afford it, so I go ahead and shop till I drop from time to time. I used to eat when I got bored, now, I seem to go shopping. Ah well, a person’s gotta do something with their spare time now don’t they? 😉

What are your hobbies?