Hobbies Keep You Happy

So go ahead and indulge yourself! You deserve to be happy!

Productivity and success can so easily become addictive.  With every little taste, we crave more.  Eventually we get so consumed by our desire to get one more thing done or to accomplish that next thing that our professional lives slowly overtake our personal.  What happens to our hobbies, those little things that we enjoy, that provide us happiness? They get left behind.

Every time that this has happened in my life, something happened.  I didn’t know it at the time, but looking back at my collective experiences, I’ve noticed one immediate change.  The minute that my passions, my hobbies were set aside for the pursuit of something else, my mood shifted.  In that moment, stress began to build, and with no hobbies, there was no release.  When you don’t leave time for what you enjoy, you become cranky, irritable.  You lose your spark.  People are starting to pay more attention to hobbies – even scientists are now studying the effects of different hobbies on the body, the brain and on our emotions.  You won’t find a bunch of statistics or evidence backed statements in this post…this right brained girl hates numbers and anything that sounds remotely like a text book.  But what you will find is my genuine love for hobbies and a plea to get back to yours.

If I love hobbies so much what are some of mine?

Glad you asked.  I’m what they call multi-passionate.  No, it’s not my take on Divergent.  Multi-passionate means that I’m drawn to multiple different passions.  I’m not destined to become a famous musician or painter or any other skill that takes years of dedicated practice.  Quite frankly, I’m drawn to too many different things to pursue any of them full time.  My hobbies range from reading and knitting, to mountain biking and skiing.  They might be different, but they are all important to me, so much so, that I set aside time for each of them.

Knitting

I’m a right brained person, that’s brimming with creativity that’s just looking for an outlet.  Yes, I write all day long for my job and come up with creative ways to engage a bright and talented community, but I still seek out creative hobbies.  My Grandma (on the Franz side) crocheted for years.  She made beautiful afghans and blankets, doilies, you name it.  But as a rambunctious and spirited child, I didn’t have the patience to sit by here side and learn…and now it’s too late.  But years later, I asked a college roommate to teach me the basics and I was hooked.  Soon I was buying up all kinds of yarn and looking up YouTube videos to learn new skills. That’s right, I taught myself to knit on YouTube!  One of these days I think I’d like to start my own channel for people who learn the way I do and make knitting available to even more people!

Through knitting, I’ve even found a way to give back, which is another passion of mine.  About two years ago, when I was at a low point and needed to embrace my passions and find something rewarding to do, I started knitting dog sweaters for the poor pups in local animal shelters.  I tapped into my skills in marketing and created a quick website and started reaching out for donations.  You can learn more about my project, Fibers for Fido, here. I’m contemplating listing some of my patterns here on this site but we’ll see how much cross over there is between marketing, community growth management and knitting first!

Reading

What better way to escape or get a reprieve from a busy or stressful day than to carve out a few minutes with a good book? Reading does wonders for your mind, engaging your brain, releasing your emotions, broadening your vocabulary, its benefits are almost endless really.  I love books of all different kinds but mostly try to get my paws on historical books or crime novels.  Reading is something that I had been doing so much of that I started writing reviews and now I work with a few different publishers and review their books in my spare time.  You can find these reviews at BlackDogSpeaks.com.

A little known fact about me: A few years ago, when prepping for a yoga teacher training I was reading a book by the instructors.  In the book they explained how their children had become some of their greatest teachers and encouraged us, the trainees to look for teachers like these our in lives.  I didn’t have any kids at the time (still don’t, but some day)…but I had a dog.  Murphy’s actually quite a big dog.  He’s a 90LB American Black Labrador.  The more I thought about him, the more I realized that I have to learn from him.  The way he greats each day, the way he loves, forgives and plays.  There’s a lesson in almost everything he does.  So when I started my yoga blog, I named it after him.  And then again, when I started my book review blog, I named it after him.

Writing

On the inverse of reading, writing is an incredible hobby.  I both journal and do some creative writing.  When I started reviewing books I connected with a phenomenal author, Daniel Pembrey.  Since then he’s inspired to me to draft my own story and I’m prepping myself to begin the second draft of the novel.  Its a scary and daunting experience but its one that I wouldn’t have traded for the world.  I am eternally grateful to him and his advice. I also have to thank Douglas Humphries for editing my first draft and inspiring much needed changes for this next impending draft.

Whether you want to write a novel, or you are looking for some stress relief, I highly suggest journalling.  Free writing has been and continues to be one of the most cathartic things that I have ever done.  I believe that I will write in journals and diaries for the rest of my life – not caring one bit if they are never read by anyone but myself.  In fact, I seldom even go back and read what I have journaled.  Stop bottling every thought and feeling up inside of you.  Let it all out on paper and let it go.  Its amazing the problem solving that comes from journalling.

Getting Active

I mentioned above that I love mountain biking and skiing, but I love hiking and sitting around camp fires too.  I have been blessed with parents who have always encouraged us to get outdoors and play.  They built a cabin in the mountains of western Pennsylvania when we were little and I spend my weekends and summers playing in the woods.  My dad taught me to ski at the young age of six! I’ve been running and jumping and playing around in the mountains for as long as I can remember and I plan on doing just that for as long as I am able.  Getting outside and getting active is one of the best things that I can recommend to you for health in mind, body and spirit.  Just get out there and take a walk if nothing else.   If you, like me are based in western PA then there are plenty of parks both state and locally maintained that are just waiting for you to get out there!