Finding Joy in the Margins
Why I Still Collect Stamps (and Why You Might Want a Hobby Like It)
Hello Friends!
It feels like this is the longest year ever. We keep living in interesting times (as the old curse goes, and that’s putting it mildly), and the world feels heavier than usual. The news cycle, the uncertainty, all of it - it adds up.
But I don’t want to dwell on all that. We all have had enough of that. So what I do want to talk about is something else - the small refuges that keep us sane. Today, I’d rather be an advocate for what I will call “Finding Joy in Margins”. My wife jokes that I have a hobby for every season, and I sheepishly must admit it’s true.
In the summer, you’ll find me taking walks, bike riding, and all sorts of outdoor activities with her and my daughter. I also don’t have as much time to play Magic: The Gathering - but for whatever reason, spring and summer are my card-playing seasons. When I can, I play a lot of MTG Arena. I’ll be the first to admit I’m not the best player. Still, I find joy in immersing myself in the lore and, most importantly, the skill of deck building, creating new and exciting decks from an ever-growing collection. I don’t spend money on cards like I used to - thanks to a lack of space - but also due to the digital version of the app making this much easier. Get enough wins, and I can have a chance to unlock the right cards!
However, my true favourite passion, and most who know me for any length of time will tell you, is my joy of stamp collecting. I can’t explain it, but something weird happens as the fall approaches. As the days get shorter, and especially as I spend more time indoors, the news cycle seems harder to escape. I find myself gravitating to stamp collecting like never before.
I’ve been collecting for years now, and as many know, I also run a community for Canadian stamp collectors, now with over 2,100 enthusiasts. It’s become a little refuge when the world feels overwhelming. And lately? It’s felt like too much pretty often. I’ve actually been spending lots of time in various stamp communities.
There’s something about stamp season (yes, that’s a thing - for many) that kicks in once summer wraps up. Perhaps it’s the cooler weather, or maybe it’s simply that we’re all seeking ways to slow down after the chaos of summer. Whatever it is, I find myself spending more time with my collection each fall, and honestly, I need it more than ever. I have just wrapped up an exhaustive 3 weeks of cataloging my collection, using AI to transform my notes and information into a comprehensive database. This allows me to see patterns, get suggestions on things I should seek out to complete the collection, and generally escape the noise of the world.
As I wrote about in The Accidental Community Manager, hobbies that let you get lost in something are an important coping mechanism for a job that takes so much from you. It’s almost an imperative as a community manager or builder to have something that allows you to disconnect and bring yourself pure joy. However, and to me this is the most crucial aspect, we need spaces where our hands are busy with something tactile and our minds can actually rest from thinking about the world outside.
For me, it’s stamps. But as much as I love my other hobbies, for you, it might be music, painting, cooking, woodworking - anything that’s decidedly non-digital or lets you escape the dreaded doom scroll, notifications or interruptions. It’s that special thing that truly lets you sink into the flow of it. And some cultures even have a name for it, for example Meraki (Greek).
What I love about stamp collecting is actually twofold. There’s the community aspect - the in-person shows, the camaraderie, the friendships that form over shared obsessions. Running this stamp community has taught me so much about what brings people together, and why they collect, but also surprisingly how I’m increasingly seeing a new audience of young people finding their way accidentally into the hobby - either through inheritance or by catching the bug from one pretty stamp that sends them down the rabbit hole.
But what is my real joy? It’s in the quiet moments - which, believe me, can still happen with an active 2-year-old. Now my time is restricted to when she goes to sleep or before she wakes up - and hopefully a shared interest as she gets older (she already loves my animal stamps, but I think she thinks they are stickers). I have spent countless hours organizing, studying, and handling these tiny pieces of history. Just me and the stamps and blessed silence from the noise.
If you’ve made it this far (thank you), you’re likely also asking, Why am I going on and on about stamps? October is soon and it will be National Stamp Collector Month, so it feels like the right time to say this: find your thing. Find the hobby that lets you disappear into passion and presence. Find what gives you permission to ignore your phone, to tune out the stress, to just... be.
Mine happens to involve tiny perforated rectangles with pictures on them. Yours might look completely different. But I promise you, having that space to disconnect and reconnect with simple joy? That’s not just nice to have anymore. It’s essential.
Happy building!
Adrian
For those curious, I do own a Bluenose, this variety - "man on the mast" recently sold at auction for over $8,500 CAD - that's a lot of other stamps. It's actually more than double what I have spent on all my collecting purchases since I began 😂