The Hobby Thinker

by Jennifer Wren Call
(a thinker professionally unlicensed but deeply entangled, like the theory)
Some people garden.
Some knit socks for loving or suspicious relatives.
Some build ham radios or dive into sourdough
like it's fermented scripture.
Me?
I think.
Unapologetically. Unsponsored.
Quietly, relative, relentless.
There's a luxury no catalog pitches:
A room not filled with sound—
but absence.
Yes, that is a dash for the longer pause.
Silence that doesn't ask where the scissors went.
I enter into my mind of thoughts
Not just "what should I eat" thoughts,
but cathedral thoughts—
where echoes become insights,
and loose threads weave linens no one asked for
but somehow needed.
To those brushing PB&J off the mail,
rocking a child while building a novel of woe in your head—
stepping on Legos.
You're not failing at art.
You're growing it.
You're writing verses in crushed Cheerios
and unpaid PTO.
I know my thoughts grew from that fertile spot
of long nights, hard days, adversity—
expanding imagination like a universe.
But let me whisper this:
Pay it forward.
Your day is coming.
Keep a notebook by the sink.
Speak your poem into the mirror's fog.
Jot down the line that finds you mid-vacuum.
Save it—somewhere.
These aren't scraps.
Come back someday,
you'll find these...
They're seedlings.
Tomorrow's storied oaks.
Your birdwatching, wisdom-burdened brain
is building symphonies of words with resonance.
Just don't forget to observe.
And take notes—
because memory is fraught with error,
and this is why we need you:
The hobbyist thinker.