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Seattle’s Pandemic Hobbies: Fad or Foundational?

▼ TEMPORARY INSANITY ▼

Bread Baking

During Pandemic (DP): Obsessively caring for sourdough starter to compensate for total lack of control over the rest of the world.
After Pandemic (AP):
Working off excess carbs while storing newly purchased Dutch oven in empty regular oven.  

 

Home Haircuts 

DP: According to YouTube, all you need is clippers and gumption.

AP: Double-tipping hair stylist to fix self-inflicted blunders, but sneaking an occasional DIY bang trim.

 

Unlimited Screen Time

DP: Binging Tiger King while children rewatch Frozen 2 so often that the plot starts to make sense.
AP: Binging Schitt’s Creek while reinstituting parental tablet controls and pointing kids toward reopened playgrounds.

 

Daytime Pajamas

DP: Credo is either that (a) leggings are pants, (b) pants are optional, or (c) cleanliness is relative.
AP: Refer to anything with buttons as “dressing up” and rocking full eye makeup for any non-grocery run.

 

Vegetable Gardens

DP: Homegrown greens mean avoiding the mosh pit that is the produce aisle. Besides, didn’t victory gardens beat Hitler?
AP: Begging neighbors to take excess zucchini but plotting domination for upcoming decorative gourd season.

 

Virtual Happy Hour

DP: Desperate joy at seeing familiar faces followed by awkward silence and a dearth of conversation topics.
AP: Efficient way to round up old college buds or former work cliques for pants-free catch-ups.

 

▲ PERMANENT INSTITUTION ▲

Published in the A City Resilient issue of Seattle Met.











Allison Williams
Allison Williams
Since joining Seattle Met in 2011, Allison Williams has overseen the magazine’s travel and outdoor coverage, including deep dives into Olympic National Park, the Columbia River, and a Burger King drive-thru in Canada. She edits the travel-focused blog Tripster and contributes service, news, interview, and narrative pieces to the magazine, including long-form features about mountain mysteries and puppies in prison. She’s earned awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and been nominated for a City and Regional Magazine award.  Allison was raised here in Olympia and studied writing at Duke University, Oxford University, Columbia Journalism School, and University of Alaska. She began her career in New York City in the newsrooms of Metro newspaper and Time Out New York, then hightailed it back to her native habitat so she could write guidebooks and climb mountains.