One of the things I’ve realized this year is that I don’t really collect hobbies.
From the outside, it probably looks like I bounce from one thing to another. Gardening. Bookbinding. Norwegian. Citation templates. Herbs. Cocktails. Ancient history.
They’re all over the place.
To me, though, they’re all the same hobby.
I like understanding how things work.
The garden has made that clearer than anything else. Before this year, companion planting was something I’d read about. Soil composition was something I’d heard people discuss. Medicinal herbs were mostly names in books.
Now I get to watch it happen.
I’m seeing why one bed dries out faster than another. Why some plants seem happier next to certain neighbors. Which herbs attract pollinators and which ones don’t. Which vegetables struggle through a heat wave while others barely notice. It’s no longer just biology in a textbook. It’s biology happening in my backyard.
That’s probably why my garden is organized the way it is. It isn’t the most efficient layout, and I’ve certainly spent more time weeding because of it. But separating plants by water needs, companion planting, shade, and other variables lets me see what works and what doesn’t. I’m treating the garden as one giant experiment.
The same thing happens with my other projects.
I didn’t start making notebooks because I thought notebooks were too expensive. I started because I wanted to understand how books are made. Every mistake teaches me something, and every notebook gets a little better than the last.
I originally started learning Norwegian because I had a reason to. Somewhere along the way, though, the language became the reward. I enjoy the grammar, I enjoy listening to it, and I was ridiculously proud of myself for using it in Oslo, even if it was only a little.
The citation bundles might be the clearest example of all. I don’t enjoy formatting bibliographies. I enjoy solving problems, and I kept thinking about how much easier graduate school would have been if I’d had something like this on my desk.
Maybe that’s why all of these projects seem connected to me, even if they don’t to anyone else.
I first learned about commonplace books while reading the second book of A Discovery of Witches. It sounded like such a cool idea.
I immediately found an unused notebook in my inventory and started carrying it around.
I had been told that one simply writes down anything interesting. Unfortunately, I wasn’t finding anything interesting at first, and every time I wrote something down, it felt forced.
A few months ago—maybe a year, time has ceased to have meaning—I started a bullet journal again. Instead of writing down things I needed to do or making trackers, it slowly turned into a commonplace book.
I started devoting entire sections to things I was interested in: four pages on whisky, seven pages on Gàidhlig grammar, and assorted bits of trivia that appealed to me for reasons known only to my brain.
Eventually, I had to start making separate notebooks. I simply had too many interests to fit into one.
As far as I can remember, I currently have notebooks for:
Baseball
Gàidhlig
Norwegian
One for a game I am playing but refuse to admit to publicly
Religious studies
Gardening adventures (which covers enough topics to qualify as several notebooks by itself)
And I still have many blank notebooks waiting to be filled.
So how many notebooks is too many?
Like the question of how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, the world may never know.
I think a lot of us are taught that life follows a fairly straightforward path: go to college right after high school, find a career, and work forty or more hours a week until retirement. I never really followed that plan, and for a long time I felt like I had somehow done life incorrectly.
As I have gotten older, though, I have realized that the things I didn’t do made me different in a way that I actually appreciate. I have always been curious, and I finally feel like I have given myself permission to simply learn things because they interest me.
So these days I find myself learning crafts, bookbinding, languages, gardening, and even some homesteading skills. There is always some new rabbit hole waiting to be explored.
Not always having steady work has certainly been stressful, but it has also taught me that life is about more than giving decades of yourself to an employer who may never appreciate you the way you deserve. There is value in creating things, learning things, and following your curiosity.
At this point, if something sounds interesting, I want to try it. Some people may think that is strange, and perhaps it is. But I enjoy it, and I like the idea of keeping my mind active and open to new experiences.
Maybe I am making up for lost time. Or maybe I am finally becoming the person I was always meant to be.
I have a tendency to overcomplicate things. At least, that is probably how it appears from the outside. But for me, I usually have to do things the “hard way” if I want them to work at all.
For example, I grouped my garden into separate beds based on companion planting, water needs, shade requirements, and a variety of other factors. That left a lot of space in between them that still isn’t completely weeded and is taking a massive amount of time.
But all of that was necessary if I wanted to see what works and what doesn’t. I already know that I can’t plant anything close to the quince-from-hell, and that apparently I can kill peppermint where I intentionally planted it, but not the peppermint that insists on growing literally everywhere else in the garden.
I have notebooks for language learning. I keep lists of cocktail ideas. I have spent an unreasonable amount of time designing printables. I make tables, draw diagrams, and write down things that many people would simply trust themselves to remember.
I don’t think the complexity is the problem. I think it is how I learn.
I need to do things in a way that helps me not only learn, but remember what I learned and how I learned it.
Paying attention applies to just about everything I do instead of blindly hoping for success.
I have always felt the need to break things down and figure out how they work. I have never been able to simply memorize phrases and words in other languages because I need to know why something is spelled one way with one pronoun and differently when the pronoun changes.
I enjoy creating systems. I love finding patterns. That might mean I have more notebooks than most people find necessary.
Some days I will spend hours writing down Norwegian grammar rules and lists of reflexive verbs. Other days I will spend hours drawing diagrams of different baseball pitches.
What looks complicated to others simply feels interesting to me.
The goal was never perfection.
It was understanding.
And if understanding occasionally requires a little overcomplication, I think that’s a trade-off worth making.
I hit Norwegian hard before my trip and ultimately got burned out. One thing that came out of it, though, was an idea I really liked: a language-learning compendium.
Obviously, I started with basics like articles, gender, common verbs, and conjugations. But I also wanted to add things that I knew would help me personally.
For example, I struggle with vocabulary recall, especially when I’m nervous. What I ended up doing was asking ChatGPT to give me short readings at my current level. I would write down words I didn’t know, look up their meanings, and add them to the compendium. Writing them down helps force them to stick in my memory.
I write everything in pencil first, then go back over it in pen. Studies have shown that handwriting notes helps retention, and after years of trying different methods, I know that writing things down works better for me than typing.
Right now, I am diving deeper into grammar, like modal verbs, and writing down common phrases and usage notes. I still burn out from time to time, but I am really enjoying the process.
I am also not sure why I am studying so hard, since I keep second-guessing whether I will ever be able to move to Oslo.
But I know myself.
I just can’t stop learning.
Even if other people think what I’m learning is useless.
I recently went on a cruise to Scandinavia with a parent. One of my closest friends lives in Oslo, and I really wanted to see them—especially because I’m planning to start looking for work in Norway at some point. That’s a very long-term project involving sponsors, immigration paperwork, and enough bureaucracy to keep several trees employed, but still.
Our first port was Kristiansand, Norway. We took an excursion to the old town and a cannon museum that had been a Nazi stronghold during World War II. It wasn’t my first choice. We had originally booked a train excursion, but it was canceled, so I scrambled to find a replacement.
Old Quarter of Kristiansand
The main thing I wanted to do in Kristiansand was visit Norli, one of Norway’s bookstore chains. Naturally, that became my first priority.
This is clearly a cathedral but I was standing next to Norli, so it counts.
Finding a Norwegian book turned out to be more difficult than expected. Many of the books were in English, and a surprising number seemed to involve Harry Potter. I have had enough of J.K. Rowling to last the rest of my natural life, so I kept looking. Eventually, I found a novel that turned out to be book seven in a series. Fortunately, it appears to be fairly standalone.
After that, I became determined to buy shoes.
I had packed my ugliest pair of sneakers for the trip and immediately regretted it. While shopping, I stopped in one store where the salesperson assumed I was Norwegian.
Reader, I have been living off that compliment ever since.
This is probably why she thought I was Norwegian – required for citizenship.
I’ve been trying to teach myself Norwegian on and off for years, so having someone assume I was local felt fantastic.
Eventually, I found the shoes and then it was off to Oslo.
I won’t go into much detail about my visit with my friend. Some things are allowed to remain private. 😉
What I will say is that a surprising amount of Oslo was shut down because the president of India was visiting.
That is not a sentence I ever expected to write.
Despite that, I loved Oslo. After meeting up with my friend, parent and I headed to the cultural museum because I had one goal: see a stave church.
Stave church…dream come true!
The museum ended up being one of the best museums I’ve ever visited, and I’ve been fortunate enough to visit places like the Louvre and the Rodin Museum. The grounds contain around 180 buildings from different regions and time periods throughout Norwegian history. I could easily have spent an entire day there.
This is the inside of the stave church. I can’t believe how beautiful it was.
Sadly, Oslo was also our last day in Norway.
One thing I’m especially proud of is how much Norwegian I actually attempted to speak. A few years ago, I would have been far too shy to try. This time, I used Norwegian whenever I could. Everyone was patient, and I even completed an entire transaction in Norwegian.
For someone who mostly learned through podcasts, books, and stubbornness, that felt like a victory.
Then we arrived in Denmark.
Our first stop was Copenhagen, where we spent the entire day at Tivoli Gardens. The rides were fantastic. Some of them are surprisingly old, and yet they remain incredibly fun.
A garden in Tivoli Gardens.Still not sure what this pirate ship is, what it’s for, etc.
Outside of Tivoli, though, I didn’t enjoy Copenhagen very much. I found the city dirtier than I expected, and nothing else really grabbed my attention.
Our final port was Skagen, where we took an excursion to Voergaard Manor and the supposedly idyllic town of Sæby.
The manor was interesting, although much of it remains a private residence, which limited what we could see.
Mostly Renaissance but the original section is medieval.
The bigger frustration came later. We lost about thirty minutes in Sæby because several people on our excursion interpreted “be back on the bus by 11:00” as “return whenever your heart tells you.”
That was unfortunate because Sæby ended up being the more interesting stop. I would have happily spent more time wandering around there.
I like old churches. This one is in Saeby.
As for the cruise itself?
This was my second cruise, and I suspect it will also be my last.
The vegan food options were disappointing. The food wasn’t terrible, but when I’m paying cruise prices, I expect meals that are better than what I can make at home. For a buffet that seemed to stretch across half the ship, there were usually only two or three vegan options available, most commonly lentil curry or eggplant.
At one point there was vegan gravy but no vegan mashed potatoes.
I still haven’t recovered from the confusion.
Finding decent food became a daily challenge, which was a major disappointment.
And, of course, there is one unavoidable feature of cruises.
This is not an actual photo of me – credit to ChatGPT for the image generation.
I have spent years feeling inadequate because there is so much I want to learn that I eventually become overwhelmed and end up touching none of it.
At the moment, I am studying four languages. I am still in the phase where my brain immediately reverts to French because it was the first language I learned outside of English.
There are currently four commonplace books in my bag. One of them is completely blank, just in case.
I carry a pen case full of stationery tools I “might need,” along with a Kindle Scribe.
I want to write a dissertation on the Scottish Highlands around the time of Culloden. Or perhaps another period of Highland history. I still cannot decide.
I want to learn to knit so I can make beautiful sweaters and shawls.
I am trying to grow my own food and learn how to can it, partially because gardening fascinates me and partially because apparently some part of my brain is preparing for a zombie apocalypse.
I want to make paper and ink.
I am going to spin my own yarn someday and dye it using plants I have grown myself.
I am designing a planner that actually fits the way I think and work instead of settling for something mass-produced.
I am binding notebooks by hand because it turns out I genuinely enjoy it.
For a long time, all of this made me feel like a failure. I constantly felt behind. Surely, if I were more disciplined, more focused, or more organized, I would already be proficient at half these things.
Eventually, though, I realized something important:
You cannot dedicate your entire life to mastering dozens of subjects simultaneously.
Some seasons of life are for language learning. Some are for gardening. Some are for theology, history, sewing, bookbinding, or note-taking systems.
Some days I spend hours studying Torah. Other days I spend six straight hours documenting Norwegian vocabulary and grammar rules in my learning compendium like a Victorian scholar who has just discovered Scandinavia.
And honestly? That is fine.
I have stopped trying to force myself into becoming a hyper-efficient machine optimized for productivity and mastery at all times.
Now I mostly try to ride the wave of whatever is currently lighting up my brain.
The interests eventually circle back around anyway.
You do not have to learn everything at once.
You just have to stay curious enough to keep returning to the things you love.
Sometimes we begin with one interest and discover it was really a doorway.
When I first created this site, I imagined it as a place to explore Highland culture, heritage, and plant-based recipes inspired by Scotland. That still matters to me. But over time, curiosity has a way of wandering.
The deeper I looked into roots and tradition, the more I found myself drawn to gardens, language study, handmade books, seasonal rhythms, and the quiet satisfaction of learning for its own sake.
So perhaps this was never only a Highland blog.
Perhaps it was always meant to be a place for roots, research, and everyday beauty.
Since beginning this endeavor, I’ve branched into many interests that may not seem connected at first glance—but I love finding the threads between them.
Right now, I’m exploring gardening, canning, Torah study, language learning, baseball stat apps, planners and journals, designing my own planner, and crafting useful paper goods such as reusable notebook covers and hand-bound notebooks. I also enjoy finding creative ways to use what I already own.
Future projects include learning to knit and experimenting with making fountain pen ink.
As a neurodivergent person, I’m proud of learning how to nurture many interests at once rather than feeling pressured to choose only one.
I hope you’ll keep reading and join me in learning along the way.
Cèilidh Nam Freumhan 