Mondays & Memories of My Mom – Happy Hobbies

Happy last Monday of January! I always look forward to Mondays because they are my #52Chances each year, in which I get to share Memories of My Mom with all of you! Plus, since the spring of 2020, the last Monday of each month has become even more special to me. [See my “LAST THOUGHTS” section, near the end of this post.]

Just a reminder, as January winds down, this whole month is still celebrating (among other things) National Sunday Supper Month, National Blood-Donor Month, National Hobby Month, National Hot Tea Month, National Oatmeal Month, National Slow Cooking Month, and National Soup Month – but January is not over yet!

#NationalHobbyMonth

This week, I’d like to write more about hobbies. A hobby is generally a pleasure-seeking activity that we do, on a fairly regular basis, usually in our spare time. Hobbies add excitement, diversity and enjoyment to our somewhat hum-drum lives. Hobbies also provide us with various health-benefits, as well as relief from depression, anxiety and stress!

Photography, exercising, gardening, cooking, shopping, organizing, reading, writing, crafting, collecting, traveling, and watching movies are just a dozen (of an endless amount) of popular hobby choices that people have taken-up over the years.

I’m sure a lot more people have especially started new hobbies over this past year (or rekindled old hobbies), while in “lock-down” for Covid-19, alone. Additionally, more people probably turned their hobbies into online businesses over this past year, than ever before; creating a new source of income, while having to work from home. We’re a resourceful lot when need be!

Gloria Pitzer, 1985

As January is the beginning of the new year, a lot of resolutions involve starting a new hobby – or turning a hobby into a vocation! Similarly to Mark Twain, NationalDayCalendar.com says about hobbies: “…if you’re really lucky, you can find what you love to do and turn it into your career. You know what they say: ‘If you make your hobby your job, you’ll never have to work a day in your life.’”

#FunAtWorkDay

‘Find a job you enjoy doing and you will never have to work a day in your life.’ – Mark Twain

That’s what happened for Mom. Her girlhood “hobby” of journaling turned into her passion for writing, which turned into her “calling” and eventually her legacy. Mom always said that she made a living with her writing, but it was her writing that made living worthwhile; and that being a writer wasn’t what she did but, rather, who she was!

However, Mom never looked at writing as a “hobby” for herself. To Mom, it was simply part of her being – something she did routinely, every day (like brushing her hair), since she was about 10 years old, until just before she passed away (which was only three years ago, last week).

Mom had a special talent for combining food-for-thought editorials with food-for-the-soul passages, entertaining illustrations and food-for-the-table recipes – all sprinkled with a dash of satire and a pinch of wit – in most of her writings. You can see a list of her writings under the “Cookbooks” and “Other Publications” tabs on this website.

FROM MOM’S MEMORIES…

As seen in…

My Cup Runneth Over And I Can’t Find My Mop (Secret Recipes^TM, St. Clair, MI; Dec. 1989, p. 25)

THE LITTLE STEPS

… Over the years, the reporters who came to interview us, somehow arrived at our doorstep anticipating a happy cross between the Walton’s and the Brady Bunch. I don’t know if they were disappointed or relieved to learn that we weren’t even close to either of the adorable, but fictional, families they expected.

There were times when the reporters asked to come out to our home, then, in Pearl Beach (near Algonac) and so small, I use to say, if we had a City Hall it would be located over a phone booth!

They would approach the story as if it were just another housewife with a happy little hobby who turned it into a profitable business. My writing was never a hobby… For lack of a better definition, the Internal Revenue Service calls our enterprise a ‘business’… [while] others call it our ‘work’. I, however, like the word ‘livelihood’ because it is a lively experience.

‘Journalism is a peculiar profession to follow. I’ve been a serious journalist [since graduating high school in 1954]. I’ve worked among writers who wrote to live, while the rest of us lived to write. We had to communicate, to reach out to someone with ideas…thoughts…reasonings and remembering. While I live to write, I must consider that others do not. Writers never retire, not if they’re truly writers. Editors may retire and reporters may retire…at some given point. But, old writers never die, they just run out of words.’ – Gloria Pitzer, My Cup Runneth Over and I Can’t Find My Mop (Secret Recipes^TM, St. Clair, MI; Dec. 1989, p. 22)

MORE FROM MOM’S MEMORIES…

As seen in…

My Cup Runneth Over And I Can’t Find My Mop (Secret Recipes^TM, St. Clair, MI; Dec. 1989, p. 42)

HOW IT BEGAN – CRITICAL EARLY ADVANTAGE

THE MIMEOGRAPH did give me the advantage of being self-sufficient without having to go into debt. Paul failed to see the importance of my having to have this, until I showed him the receipt for it having been paid-in-full, and the bankbook that showed him exactly how much I had earned from having printed a newspaper column on the machine, then selling them to 11 newspapers around the state.

John McPartlin had loaned me his newspaper directory, from which I drew the names and addresses of those weekly papers that had a circulation sufficient to afford a dollar per column, per week. Considering the mimeograph only cost $79.95, I feel I did pretty well, skimping and scraping to get it paid for. Paul was skeptical, however, that it would ever be anything then an expensive hobby. I think I must have tried so very hard to be the best I could be, to prove to him that he was wrong about me.

THE NEWSLETTER BEGAN with the mimeograph in our utility room where I cut the stencils, Inc. the drum by hand, applied the stencils and ran the copies off, a few hundred at a time, allowing them to ear-dry on the dining room table in the next room. The dining room table was a door to which Paul had affixed for table legs. It was seldom clear of our work. I never gave any thought, then either, to the number of hours that we put into producing the newsletter. We simply worked until the work was finished, or we found a good ‘breaking-off’ point.

I found many articles of interest online regarding hobbies for making you happy, as well as making you money. Three great reads that I liked are “4 Ways To Find A Hobby You Love…” by Deanna de Bara at TheMuse.com, “20 Productive Hobbies That Will Make You Smarter And Happier” by Chris Haigh at LifeHack.com, and “21 Best Profitable Hobbies…” by at GatheringDreams.com.

Personally, I have many hobbies that I love. I’ve even made a few bucks from some of them. However, I’m not a very good sales person and that is a very important element one needs if they are going to make money from their hobby. You really need to be able to sell yourself and/or your brand, as well as your product and/or service – OR be able to pay someone else (which is usually a lot of money) to do it for you.

‘Succeeding against the odds…When I look back now, I realize that I was so busy trying to prove that others were wrong about me, I couldn’t see how events were already taking place that would sooner or later put me where I had always wanted to be – writing for a worthwhile living, while it made living worthwhile.’ – Gloria Pitzer My Cup Runneth Over – And I Can’t Find My Mop (Secret Recipes^TM, St. Clair, MI; Dec. 1989, p. 81)

Illustration by Gloria Pitzer

EVEN MORE FROM MOM’S MEMORIES…

As seen in…

My Cup Runneth Over And I Can’t Find My Mop (Secret Recipes^TM, St. Clair, MI; Dec. 1989, p. 53)

RISKS – THE HARD ROAD TO SELF-SUFFICIENCY

There are many risks involved with going into business for yourself, no matter what product or service you intend to offer. If I had thought more about the risks, than I did about the possibilities, I never would have moved an inch toward doing any of the things about which I now write.

My husband is not a risk-taker. I am. We complement each other well. He still becomes uneasy and anxious about every new idea I have for another book or another project, on the basis that ‘we can’t afford it.’

I have learned, over the years, to keep many of my projects to myself until they are completed, which in the long run, saves Paul from worrying unnecessarily about something that will very likely turn out well, and keeps me from worrying that Paul is worrying.

SOME PEOPLE EXPERIENCE a certain let-down, after reaching what they consider ‘the top’. When they finally reach the Everest of their ambitions [and] make it to the top, they start to wonder why they were in such a hurry to get there anyhow. Like Lee Iacocca, who was only in his mid-40s when he was president of the Ford Motor Company, writes in his autobiography, [that he had] no idea what he was going to do ‘for an encore’!

I have never had to worry about this, fortunately. When I have been asked about goals or destination, it is been my feeling that every corner I turn has a new goal, a new destination awaiting us. I have never thought of any one point as being the top. Life has so many wonderful opportunities for each of us to take advantage of, that it does not seem reasonable that I should give myself the limitations that would determine just how far I should be able to go.

Because this was never a hobby, never WORK, never a job, I have had no problem with the worry or concern that accompanies a position from which one expects to retire. I would not want to give up what I have been doing since I was a child [writing]. It would be unfair to have to give up doing something that has also brought so much pleasure and good information to so many people.

It was, however, only when I realized WHAT I should be writing about and what I should be sharing with the readers – what I knew best – that things really began to happen. Of course, my husband wisely reminds me, when someone asked about writing their own cookbook, that WRITING it is the easiest part. Knowing how to SELL it is the hard part!

LAST THOUGHTS…

#WHBY

Today is the last Monday of January – so don’t forget to tune-in to WHBY’s “Good Neighbor” show, with Kathy Keene; as I’ll be on with her at the start of the show, discussing our memories of my mom with her listeners. I’ll also be sharing a few of Mom’s favorite recipes, too.

IN CLOSING…

https://www.balboapress.com/Bookstore/BookDetail.aspx?BookId=SKU-001062253

#NationalSoupMonth

In honor of January’s continued celebration of National Soup Month, here is Mom’s “secret recipe” for #CreamOfBroccoliSoup like that from one of her favorite places, Big Boy Restaurant’s; as seen in her last book… Gloria Pitzer’s Cookbook – The Best of the Recipe Detective (Balboa Press; Jan. 2018, p. 118)