What are some literary hobbies one can develop besides reading & writing? To get more out of what we consume, to spend time with more quality, etc. Thank you.
Take long walks (and short walks)–preferably at dusk and dawn.
Repeat the same paths on your walks, with new eyes.
I have often found, for reasons somewhat unknown to me, that considering windows, water, shadows, the sky, and light itself have been most productive for summoning poems or punctuating the spaces between paragraphs.
(You read a different book inside and outside. You read differently in different places.)
Collecting things–feathers, stones, postcards, letters, old photographs, anything really–has also given texture to my life of thought in unspeakable ways.
It is important for people who are very affected by their environments–which is common for introverts and readers–to decorate their spaces accordingly. Candles, curtains, flowers and plants, small things which draw your gaze and give life to the text you are reading or writing outside the text itself.
(If you decorate your home with things that are recycled, things which have already lived other lives outside of your life and outside of their production, your space will be infinitely more complex. You will live within the present and the past simultaneously)
Adopt an animal. So many beautiful and intelligent creatures are in need of safety, love, and homes.
Cook things from scratch. Dry herbs, compost the remainders, return in some small way to a life of minimalism.
Keep a dream journal. Do not privilege your waking life above the world of dreams. In sleep, you live many lives in many worlds, which cannot be cleanly translated into the language of morning.
If possible and the necessities of your life allow it, spend entire days without speaking a single word.
Most importantly, and finally, turn what you have read and written into praxis–a daily practice of ethics and empathy. It is not enough to read a philosophy; you must make it so and manifest it in the real.
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