maya da costa guide feature polyesterzine polyester zine hobby hobbies — Maya da Costa is not your average twenty-something, stuck at the precipice of life, wondering which direction to take. Sure, she experiences the breadth of confusing emotions that accompany coming of age, but rather than letting it stagnate her, she takes that energy and puts it into her exploration of the world.
She’s been this way for as long as she can remember. Da Costa grew up engaging with all sorts of activities, some that stuck, some that didn’t. These days, a week in da Costa’s life could easily include acting, dancing, writing, Muay Thai boxing, watercolor painting, reading, and more. She’s built a life around seeking balance, allowing herself to have multiple creative outlets, and fighting that inevitable brain rot we are all so privy to in the 21st century.

In her debut feature film, Girls Like Girls, directed by Hayley Kiyoko and based on Kiyoko’s novel of the same title, da Costa plays a teenager named Coley who is caught in the frenzy of finding herself and flushed with a queer yearning. Coley is seventeen. The age where nothing makes sense, and yet every moment is met with an intensity that only seventeen-year-olds know. Da Costa has described embodying this character as “putting Coley on.” Coley is a character she could tap into so well, partly because of how earnestly she has allowed herself to commit to self-exploration in her real life by engaging with her many interests.

In fact, to prepare for her audition, Maya read Kiyoko’s book not once, not twice, but four times. It’s an example of how diligent she is, how efficiently she uses her time, and how much she loves to engage with all angles of the art she participates in. All byproducts of her ability to strike a balance between her many hobbies. So naturally, she was our go-to for this guide.

Understand That Hobbies Aren’t About Reaching A Finish Line

Hobbies benefit me because there's never an endpoint, and I like that! I don’t think about goals like, oh, I'll know I made it when I'm here. More so, the goal is to get satisfaction out of saying, okay, my kicks at Muay Thai felt better today, or my run of my scene in class today felt good, or I feel more on my leg at dance today, or even, I got a good chunk of my painting done today. It’s about constant creative stimulus and expression!

Let Inspiration Be The Driving Force

I love walking and listening to music. And whenever I'm on these walks, and a certain song comes on, it makes me kind of visualize a version of myself doing a certain hobby that I don't know yet, but I would like to. I just try to follow that. Follow that little spark of interest and keep on going with it. And that usually leads me to doing it.

I feel like most people have a little thing where they think, ‘Oh, it'd be so fun if I did this’, and then they kind of just let it pass them by. My advice is if you really want to do it, then you gotta follow through. No one's going to put it in front of you. You have to find your own way to make it happen. If there's a will, there's a way.

Know How To Vary Your Activities

Adjusting is hard but important. Muay Thai and dance require you to be really active mentally. So, let's say that I have a day where I'm doing both. Then I usually won't force myself to work on a painting or writing or something. But if I have only weightlifting for a day, then I'll be like, oh yeah, my brain has more stuff that it wants to get out, let me draw or write.

I would really like to get back into music. I played piano a lot when I was a child, and I would like to dive back into that, but I'd also like to learn how to play the guitar, maybe some singing lessons, because singing is the one that's kind of unknown for me.

Do Your Affirmations

For the last year, I've been putting up sticky notes on my mirror. They have little affirmations and words of encouragement. It just helps me stick to what I'm doing! And then, I watched the Michael Jackson movie, and I was like, oh, that's awesome, twin! But yeah, I would say reassuring yourself and encouraging yourself to push the needle helps.

Don’t Quit When Things Get Difficult

If I don’t enjoy a new hobby, I really try to ask myself why I'm not liking it. If I'm not liking it because it's hard, and I feel like I’m bad at it, and it feels uncomfortable and vulnerable, I'll stick it through. Because I feel like that's not a reason to quit something. It's really rare that I don't want to stick something through. I always try to give it a chance, and usually I’ll give it a chance so long that I end up enjoying it because I got better at it! But, I also stay consistent because I have an immigrant mom, and she's like, you ain't gonna quit!

Remember, It’s A Privilege To Explore Hobbies

Gratitude is huge for me in terms of making sure not to get too stressed or be too high-strung about these endeavors. Because it's a privilege to be able to do them with my time, considering that so many people (my parents especially, considering the way that they grew up) have to do jobs that they don't like just to get by. So, just being grateful. Sure, maybe I get stressed if I'm not a hundred percent done with a painting or whatever, but at the end of the day, it's still something that I'm loving getting to do! It’s important to push through those moments with gratitude and look at the bigger picture of things.

Maya da Costa's Guide to Balancing Multiple Hobbies