The Hobby I Forgot I Had

This is my entry on the topic ‘Take Two’ for June’s IndieWeb Carnival hosted by Nick Simson .

My mind was blank and I had no ideas when I sat down to write on the topic “Take Two” for this month’s IndieWeb Carnival.

One main reason? I don’t really believe in take twos in life.

Sure, we can all imagine alternate histories - what if I’d chosen a different career, moved to another city, or said yes instead of no to that opportunity? But here’s the thing: the person typing these words right now wouldn’t exist without every choice I’ve made, good or terrible. Whether my decisions came from wisdom or sheer stupidity, they led me here. There’s no point dwelling on hypothetical second chances.

So what could I write about?

And then, out of nowhere, a memory struck me. A hobby I had once loved and completely forgotten about.

Let me explain.

During my second year of undergrad, I had this odd little habit: collecting sand samples from every new place I visited. Sounds weird? My friends thought so too.

I’d carry small glass bottles with cork stoppers (ordered from AliExpress in China) and collect soil or sand from the spot. I’d add a little slip of paper with GPS coordinates inside the bottle. I even built a small wooden tray with my limited woodworking skills to organize and display them. I kept an index of all the bottles with coordinates and place names. I did this for a year or two. Back then, I hadn’t traveled much outside my home state, but I had collected 30 to 40 unique samples, each from a place with different terrain and memories.

Then time passed. I moved on. I completely forgot about it until this Carnival prompt somehow fired a few long-forgotten neurons in my brain.

Now, more than a decade later, I’ve traveled a bit more, across India and beyond. I live in a different country now, with very different soil underfoot. It would’ve been so cool to have a collection of samples from all those places. So much better than the shitty fridge magnets, which always seem to fall off anyway.

While the idea felt novel to my younger self back then, now that I’ve seen all sorts of quirky hobbies, I feel like it’s probably not that unique. A quick Google search confirmed it. There’s even a word for it: arenophile .

It’s strange to admit, but of all the things I’ve done in life, the one I genuinely wish I could have a take two on is my old sand collection hobby.

I mean if you think of it, isn’t it the perfect souvenir? A piece of land, a piece of geography, with stories of asteroids and dinosaurs and hunters and war, of rocks weathering and continents shifting, embedded in every grain.

Maybe it’s not too late for a take two.
(´∀｀)♡ (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ (っ˘▽˘)っ

If you have written something similar for this month’s IndieWeb Carnival, please send it to me as well.