My Favorite Hobby (no court, no tiles, no knitting needles)

Last week my family attended Radio City Music Hall and witnessed Raye hold 6,000 people in the palm of her hand for nearly three hours.

If you don't know her yet, you will. And you should. She's a British singer-songwriter who sits somewhere between jazz, soul, pop, gospel, and something older than all three. On this night she performed with a full orchestra, a drummer, a percussionist, backup singers, and her two sisters. Modern and throwback all at once, the way only a true and unique talent can pull off.

The musicianship was extraordinary, but in the moments since the concert, I keep replaying how much she talked throughout the performance. Not in a way that stalled the pace or momentum, but as a storyteller-artist addressing the audience directly. Sometimes she told the story behind a lyric. Sometimes it was theatrical journeyship. Sometimes she made us laugh with the irreverent way she pokes fun at herself. And sometimes she was buying her musicians a minute to retune, filling the space with something warm and real in addition to her music. The entire evening felt like a conversation with a friend who happened to also be putting on a world-class show.

Then she sat down at the piano and performed “Ice Cream Man.”

If you haven't heard it, it's her account of being sexually assaulted by a music producer early in her career. She's said in interviews it's the hardest song she's ever written. The vast auditorium at Radio City went the kind of quiet that rooms only go when something true is happening on stage. You could feel the audience holding it with her.

Several songs later, she smiled and said, almost offhandedly:

"I love laughter. It's my favorite hobby."

And then she performed “Joy” with her two sisters, Amma and Absolutely. The chorus goes: "I may cry through the night, but my joy comes in the morning." Her sisters harmonized and traded vocal leads alongside her. The same woman who had just bled out at the piano was now on her feet, smiling, surrounded by family, singing about a joy that arrives on the other side of the grief. Not instead of it. After it. Because of the practice of getting there.

I haven't stopped thinking about it since. Even as I continue to listen to the songs in the car, on my run, on the home speakers. Not the performance, although that was beautiful. The word choice. HOBBY. She didn't say laughter is her favorite sound, or her favorite feeling, or her favorite thing. She called it a hobby. Something you practice. Something you make time for. Something you get better at by returning to it on purpose.

Sitting in that seat, having just watched her perform pain at the piano and joy on her feet in the same set, I understood what she was actually telling us. She's talked publicly about why she returns to these songs night after night. In one interview I read, she said forgiveness is something she really believes in, because without it she would be a very bitter woman. That isn't denial of what happened to her. That's design. She has built a practice of returning to the light on purpose, and she performs both the dark and the light because the practice is the point.

That's the work most of us never see and rarely attempt. And she made it accessible in a single sentence between songs.

Now as for the rest of us, most of the hobbies we're told to pursue require infrastructure. Tennis needs a partner and a court. A Zumba class needs a studio and an hour you don't have. Sip and paint needs a sitter and a Tuesday night. Pottery, pickleball, book club, pilates. They are all wonderful. They are also all logistics.

The women I work with inside Pivot With Purpose are running a race most people can't even see. Big careers, families, planning for a financial future, managing aging parents, showing up for friends, trying to stay in their own bodies. Adding a hobby to that calendar doesn't feel like self care. It feels like one more thing.

But laughter is portable. It's the hobby that lives in the margins. You can practice it in the shower. On the commute. In a text thread with your sister at midnight. In the moment your kid says something so unhinged over breakfast that you have to put the coffee down. It doesn't compete with your schedule. It lives inside of it. It also doesn't require a partner, a studio, a subscription, a babysitter, or a free Saturday. It comes from inside you. Which means nobody can cancel it, charge you for it, or take it off your calendar.

The only rule is know your room. Don't practice your laughter hobby in a meeting while your superior is explaining quarterly earnings. Read the moment. That's part of the craft.

So this week try to stop scheduling joy like it's a workout. Practice it the way Raye practices it. In the cracks. Between the songs. On purpose.

Text the friend who makes you cry laughing. Tell the story that still makes you wheeze a decade later. Put on the song that makes you dance badly in the kitchen. Let your kid see you lose it over something stupid. Rewatch the scene you've already seen four times because the line still gets you every time. Send the giphy that takes the joke one step too far.

You don't have to earn it. You don't have to finish the to-do list first. You don't have to wait for vacation. The practice IS the permission.

Raye held a room of 6,000 strangers for three hours because she let us see her full range. The pain AND the practice of joy. Not performative joy. Practiced joy. The kind you build on purpose so it's there when you need it.

That's the work.

And the beautiful part is it costs nothing, fits anywhere, and belongs entirely to you.

From Your Biggest Champion,

Nicole