What are your interests?

It’s a bit of a loaded question, isn’t it? I mean, on the surface, it seems like a question about what people do in their spare time. Hobbies and such. Model trains. Horse riding. Making your own kombucha scum blob that lives in your friend and – probably – feeds off your positive energy which it channels into a secret, mysterious scoby resistance until it’s strong enough to stage a global uprising. It’s an innocent enough question if you’re keeping it at a superficial level.

I’ve decided that I probably need to have a few pre-prepared non-concerning answers ready to go in case someone stings me with it, so I don’t come off as the kind of person who I actually am. I mean, it’s not a lie to say that I enjoy cooking, reading, gardening drawing. That’s factually correct. And, sure, it makes me sound like a middle-aged mum from a posh family with a golden labradoodle and a holiday house, but that’s probably enough information one would need if they asked a “what are your interests?” in a small talk context.

But, obviously, there are a lot of other things that interest me. That is to say, there are a lot of other things that hold my interest; that absorb my attention in such a manner that I lose all awareness of time, space and whatever Russell Crowe is banging on about on Twitter.

If I were to be completely and totally honest about my interests, I would need to include the following:

My split ends: I can spend an inordinate amount of time inspecting at the ends of my hair. I mean, split ends make your hair look like you’ve been using them to scrub bathtubs, but I get some serious satisfaction from seeing the damage my careless lifestyle has done to my one beauty. They flare out in stands of twos and threes and, when I’m really lucky, I find a hair with several – yes SEVERAL – ends fanning out like a tiny plant root. This hobby of mine means I’m rarely bored and relish stops at traffic lights.

The piece of glass that has been embedded in my foot for a decade: While helping clean up after my eldest sister’s 21^st, I stood on a piece of broken glass. It wasn’t a huge drama but it was more than just a rogue shard, so it warranted a trip to the  medical centre, where they cleaned out the wound and gave me a slightly-larger-than-average bandaid to pop over it. As far I was concerned, the glass had been flushed out. But, some time after the wound had healed, I noticed something too hard to be made from my soft, fleshy body in the scar. I picked at it and, after some dedicated digging, pried out tiny piece of glass. It was a thrilling pursuit and, much to my delight, the glass seems to keep coming to the surface. Even today, the day before my sister’s 31^stbirthday, I can pick at my foot and know there’s a reward waiting for me, entombed in my skin.

Myself: Obviously. I mean, I write a personal blog and my favourite pamper day activities are seeing a psychologist to talk about myself. As honest as it would be to say “I’m actually really interested in working out why I can be such a cunt sometimes and seeing if I can blame any of it on formative childhood experiences so I don’t have to take full responsibility for my shithouse personality,” while scooping out a double serving of wombok salad on my paper plate, I’d really have to pick my audience.