I have decided I need more side quests.

Not goals; I have enough goals.

Goals require plans and measurable outcomes and eventually somebody on Instagram explaining that I’m doing them wrong.

I want side quests.

A side quest is something you do for absolutely no sensible reason other than it sounds interesting and gets you out of the house.

Learn to throw pottery. Take a line-dancing class. Go birding. Learn to weld. Join a chess night despite last playing chess when you were 11.

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Nobody needs you to become good at it; that’s the point.

Somewhere along the way, adulthood became work, exercise, errands, laundry, streaming television and asking another adult what they’re watching.

Even our hobbies have become suspiciously productive.

We run marathons. Track our workouts. Build personal brands. Turn crafts into Etsy shops and hobbies into side hustles. Apparently nothing can simply occupy a pleasant Saturday afternoon without eventually requiring a logo.

I reject this. I want to be bad at something.

Fortunately, Los Angeles may be the greatest side-quest city in America.

The problem is figuring out where to look, so I started looking.

My first discovery was that before downloading another app designed to help you find community, check the library.

Los Angeles libraries will apparently teach you things. The West Los Angeles Regional Library has offered makerspace sessions with sewing and embroidery machines, while LA County Library hosts Fix-It Clinics where volunteers help repair broken household items.

I thought the library was where civilization kept the books, but apparently the government would also like to teach me how to fix my toaster.

Next? Parks and recreation.

This is how our mothers found our side quests when we were 8, and apparently they were on to something. LA recreation centers still offer adult classes in everything from art and dance to martial arts.

This brings me to the first rule of side quests:

Search for the skill, not “things to do in Los Angeles.”

Search “fun things to do in LA,” and the internet will attempt to sell you an immersive experience and a $19 cocktail.

Search “beginner Capoeira Los Angeles,” and suddenly things get weird.

Woodworking. Aerial silks. Archery. Sailing. Stained glass.

The Museum of Neon Art will even teach you to bend neon into your own illuminated artwork for more than $300, which is objectively too much money for a woman who already owns several lamps.

Unfortunately, I now need to know how to bend neon.

Find the weird people.

Not dangerous weird, hobby weird.

Los Angeles has groups organized around chess, crafts, roller skating and junk journaling. Social media-happy locals have even documented local clubs devoted to subjects as specific as kaleidoscopes, circus history, and fancy rats and mice.

I guarantee the woman making a stained-glass portrait of her dachshund has better weekend plans than I do.

Follow her.

I have begun doing this myself.

I recently took motorcycle safety classes because apparently at 51 I needed an M1 license.

I’ve tried line dancing despite having no compelling evidence that my body understands choreography.

Years ago, I even completed Community Emergency Response Team training, meaning Los Angeles once attempted to prepare me to help my neighbors during a major disaster.

Unfortunately, I remember almost none of it.

I am now considering going back, which means my hobbies have apparently escalated from dancing badly to preparing for societal collapse.

This feels like progress.

I’ve developed a few rules for choosing your own side quest.

It shouldn’t help your career, and you are not required to become good at it.

Ideally, it takes you somewhere you normally wouldn’t go or introduces you to people you normally wouldn’t meet.

Bonus points if, when you tell a friend what you’re doing Saturday, they respond:

“Wait. Why?”

Adulthood could use more things that don’t need to become anything. You are allowed to be a beginner, or remain mediocre indefinitely.

Maybe that’s part of why it’s so difficult to make friends as adults.

As children, somebody signed us up for soccer or dance, dropped us beside 20 strangers and drove away.

Friendship happened while we were doing something else.

Now we attend friendship mixers and download apps designed to locate compatible humans.

Maybe we should stop trying so hard to make friends and go learn stained glass instead.

Worst case, you don’t meet your new best friend, but you made an extremely questionable bowl.

Or shot an arrow.

Or learned to hula hoop.

Or discovered you hate woodworking.

That’s still a story, and that’s what I want more of.

We work because we should. Exercise because we should. Save money because we should. Answer emails because apparently civilization collapses if we don’t.

Maybe we need a category of activity with no deliverable.

Something we’re allowed to be bad at.

Something we don’t monetize.

Something that introduces us to a part of our city (and ourselves) we hadn’t met yet.

So pick something.

Search “beginner.”

Show up alone.

Be terrible.

And for the love of God, do not start a podcast about it.

Mary Kay Holmes is a Los Angeles writer covering culture, modern relationships, and the increasingly absurd business of being a person.