Who Are You? A Topic for Each Week of the Year {Week 3: Hobbies}

3. What were your favorite activities as a young child? Were you interested in sports?

To a degree, I was a bit of a boring child. My main hobby and my first love, of sorts, was reading. I was always, always, always reading something. I was reading adult-sized novels by the time I was nine or ten (which was when I started reading The Work and the Glory). I would take them to reading time in elementary school, and when we had substitutes, they would often do a double-take when they saw the size of the books I was reading.

In eighth grade, my schoolwork was slipping. I was getting some of the worst grades I had ever gotten, and my mom's threat? If my grades didn't improve, she would take away my books. Because I was spending too much time reading the books I wanted to read and not enough time actually doing my homework. My grades turned around quite quickly because I knew she would follow through. Also, as a five-year-old, I would usually sleep with a pile of picture books next to my head, so I was quite literally always with a book.

A related hobby was writing. I wrote my first story in second grade, and then in third grade I started writing more because of my teacher's focus on creative writing. It then became a bit of an obsession. I would carry a legal pad and a bundle of pens with me most places I went. At family gatherings, I could be found sitting by myself and writing stories. I loved making my own "books" (which were usually binders that I had decorated). I wanted to be an author when I grew up until I discovered my penchant for editing.

My love for writing also manifested itself in journal writing. I started my first journal when I was eleven, and it quickly became my mode of venting. I would write about all my eleven-year-old woes and fears. Sometimes I'll go back and read the funny things I wrote in that journal. This is a hobby that has stuck with me throughout my adult life. I have now finished fourteen journals and have just started my fifteenth. I have started keeping ticket stubs and programs and anything else that can be easily stuck inside my journal, so they have also become my scrapbooks of sorts.

As a kid, I also really enjoyed certain kinds of crafts. I was always trying to find some new little craft I could do. My favorite was probably friendship bracelets. I had a few different ways I would make them, and I often wore five or six of them until they would start to fray. Another craft I really enjoyed was counted cross stitching. I loved watching the picture take shape as I would work my way through each color. The last craft I did on a regular basis was crocheting. I loved doing it because I could sit and watch TV while crocheting, and it was always really satisfying to finish a project.

Another love of mine was music. My whole family is very musical. We all sing, five of us play the piano, two play the drums, and a couple of us fiddle around with guitars. I grew up listening to my dad play the piano, so I learned at a very early age how much I liked music. I started taking piano lessons at about seven, and I had three different teachers. I started with Sherry Evans, whom I loved because I was really good friends with her son. Then she and her family moved back to Idaho, and I started going to Kristen Sorenson. I only took lessons from her for a little while because my mom ended up switching me to Brenda Tuttle, who lived in our ward. I knew her family really well. I babysat her kids regularly and her husband was also my Sunday school teacher. I loved taking lessons from her. She would set up recitals at Riverton Music, where we would get to play concert grand pianos in their recital hall. I still dream about playing those pianos; they were amazing. I stopped taking lessons at about fourteen mostly because I wasn't interested in learning classical music, so Brenda said she couldn't teach me anything else at that point. I still very much regret not applying myself more and continuing my lessons.

I also very much loved singing. I sang all the time, but I was really afraid of singing in front of people. I would get really embarrassed when someone would walk in on me singing in my room or singing to my walkman. That was the worst because I usually didn't even realize I was singing. I didn't get over my stage fright until tenth grade when I started performing in choir.

Choir tour in Southern California, junior year. I'm the first on the left in the pink. Pretty sure we were singing "Up" by Shania Twain here.

Choir tour in Orlando, senior year. This was at Epcot in Disney World. This was the Beach Boys medley.

Orlando tour again. This was "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." I'm sitting with Preston and Troy. Troy's hair is honest to goodness one of my favorite memories from high school.

I never participated in organized sports, though I really wish I had. I played softball and basketball with neighborhood friends and at recess. I considered doing organized softball when I was in junior high, but that never worked out. I also considered auditioning for the junior high volleyball team, but I chickened out.

But what I did love was watching sports with my dad. When I was in elementary school, I loved watching Atlanta Braves games with my dad. I love, love, loved baseball. I still remember being crazy excited when the Braves won the World Series in 1995. (We were Braves fans because my dad followed Dale Murphy and then stuck with the team because there isn't an MLB team in Utah.) I also loved watching and going to Utah Jazz games with my dad. I still vividly remember going to my first Jazz game at five years old. My dad kept telling me that if I got tired, we could go home. He took me to a preseason game because he was sure I wouldn't last the whole game, but I proved him wrong. The Jazz beat the 76ers that night, and I watched the entire game and loved every second of it. Some of my favorite sports memories are watching the playoffs with my dad when the Jazz went to the finals in 1997 and 1998. Especially 1997 when John Stockton hit the last-second three to send the Rockets home and advance to the finals for the first time ever. It was awesome. It's mostly thanks to my dad that I am such a huge sports fan now.