Its important to find and keep a hobby
As someone who spends a decent amount of time working on personal projects, I often fall into the trap of working until burn out, then crashing, then trying to go back to working again. Of course I have hobbies, but I end up not diverting time to them very often and its to the detriment of my mental. I will look at drawings or models or books that I would’ve taken time for in the past and now they sit gathering dust, but I keep buying more because they’re my hobbies, I cant abandon them. Its hard to become an outsider to something that should be personal, whether that be a relationship or work, or a hobby. Recently I decided to get back to my hobbies, to take a step back inside what I love.
It started with what I thought would be easiest. I started to read before bed. Doesn’t matter what, I just need to read something. A comic, an article, a chapter of a novel, anything works. This has actually been so nice. Not only does it keep me interfacing with a medium that I love, it also gives me some unwinding time before bed. Most nights used to have me completely on and working until I realized how late it was then immediately getting ready for bed and trying to sleep right away. This new time to de-stress before sleep has been really good. I’m just more prepared to sleep every night. I’ve also noticed that I’m going to bed earlier, since I know I need to read before sleeping, which also helps a ton.
That first step was nice, but I have other hobbies I’ve neglected over time. I’m working now on getting back into model building. I really enjoy it, its very relaxing and I like having the physical manifestation of my work to display after I’m done. This takes time though and that’s why its been sidelined. I’ve started specifically carving out days off to build. I wake up and my calendar will just have the name of the model I’m building that day, words like “MG Zeta Ver. Ka” will glow back at me. Its been nice. Its been a long time since I’ve taken the time to build so getting them out of boxes and onto shelves is a genuinely fulfilling activity.
I’m going to keep working on taking time for other hobbies, but I just wanted to write a bit about what I’ve been doing and their importance to me to sort of “set it all in stone”. I feel like if I have written about it, I’ll be less likely to fall back into ignoring these things over time, but I guess we’ll have to see.
