Taking some time off from the world, and looking at focusing on my own goals and hobbies has been almost cathartic. When I was visiting my family, my mother told me I should consider writing a book. Merely sitting down and writing, to see where it would take me. My fiance has encouraged that I embrace my hobbies around the house, by finishing painting projects (such as the banisters), focusing on the wedding details and planning, etc.
I've had the privilege of being able to explore new career options, recharging my internal batteries, and finding my passions again. Last weekend, I babysat my nephews, without thinking about work I should be doing, or errands I should be otherwise running. I breathed easy, and enjoyed playing with 2 cute little boys, who just want to hang out and have fun with their uncle playing cars, or Skylanders. It was refreshing.
Last night, I began doing what my mother suggested, and began writing. I read articles online about how to write, how to come up with a story, theme, plot, and a whole other world. I began writing, and the story just began to flow on it's own. It may not win a Pulitzer prize, or top the New York Best seller's charts, but it will be mine, and maybe someday when it's complete I'll try sending it to a publisher for kicks. I promise that before I send it to a publisher, my readers will have first view of the book, and I'm alright with creative criticism. Who knows, maybe you will be the first people to read the next great novel, and have had the fast track first glimpse of it, with your own claim on it's fame.
The greatest realization I've had is that all these years of thinking I had horrible grammar, spelling, and run on sentences, was because I had too many thoughts in my head and no where to release them. I rambled because I felt rushed to put it on paper, and be as short and concise as I could be with my details. Having a blog, and writing a story, are so much different from that. You begin writing, as though watching a movie in your head, and describing what you see and hear. Quickly the characters take on a role all their own, and before long, you have this world that your brain created as if it were an alternate reality of it's own. You then begin to appreciate the writing itself, editing it. You start thinking about whether or not you should write as the omnipotent narrator, or first person from the perspective of your character. It becomes it's own world for you to enjoy.
At the moment I've begun realizing that much like J.M. Barrie, author of the original Peter Pan, you enter your own world, that you can begin sharing with the rest of the world, or keep to yourself. The laws of the everyday world can fade away to whatever you want them to be, and no one can tell you it's wrong. It's almost as though you are the king and master of your own world.
What I also realized, was that I have so many stories to write. There's the thoughts I'm working on at the moment. There's stories of an lovable yet eccentric woman who marches to her own beat, and fascinates the world with all the trouble she gets into on her journey's. There's even potential for ones about an entire zoo made up of miniature animals from around the world.
While Andre found Knitting over the holidays as a new hobby, I found literature again. I found reading, and with the spark of my imagination, I found writing.
I think one of the largest problem that we face as a society in our consumer driven, productivity encouraged, working world, is that we stopped having hobbies. I'm looking forward to going back out to my workshop (ok, so it's a shed with a lot of fun tools in it), and making a backing for my sister in laws dining room chair that's broken. I look forward to painting the banisters, as tedious as they may be to do, and all the construction jobs around the house I wanted to tackle when we first bought it. Andre found knitting, and he's getting good at it. I'll soon have a scarf, and he'll have a book to critique, and at nights, we're no longer sitting here bored and uninteresting. We can now have discussions on why his knitting needles broke, and he can show me the patterns of Sweaters, Scarves and blankets he wants to learn to knit. I get to share my characters, and theoretical discussions on their nature and how they'll react to plot twists. We get to sit down at night, and enjoy one another again, instead of enjoying the best of Netflix, over and over and over, in silence.
While a lot of people will tell you that certain hobbies are expensive, the truth of the matter is that it's a lot less costly than the Psychiatrist you're going to spend 10 years with weekly, after 20 years of an uneventful marriage, or even the cost of feeling drained and dead on the inside all the time. People need hobbies, and it's hard to think that we are losing them. Our parents went bowling on Friday nights, played card games, and told us to go to bed while they laughed in the kitchens of our homes into the wee hours of the mornings some weekends, because it brought them some meaning and joy to an otherwise boring standard work week in a factory or pushing paper somewhere.
Hobbies can be anything that you're passionate about and don't have to start by costing a lot of money. A book is often less than the cost of a weeks worth of coffee, and better for your brain. A salt water aquarium is slow and costly to begin, but provides countless amounts of time you can spend watching the underwater world, and planning the next steps. Heck card games can even become expensive if you allow them to, but can also provide thousands of hours of laughing and enjoyment with family and friends.
In the end, we need hobbies as much as we do breathable air. We've lost track of what hobbies can be and what we can do with our time, other than television. So why not pick a new one, and embrace it. I'd love some ideas of new hobbies, because there's not a huge creative list on the internet yet, and if we want to reverse the oppressive crushing role of Society into mindless drones, we're going to need a list like that one.
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