I’m trying a new format in blogging, and devided this blog post into several sections:
- My childhood
- My hobby as a kid
- Should adults only be serious?
- My life without a proper hobby
- What I think of hobbies now, and why I think they are important
- How we can go back to our hobby
- How to maintain our hobby
- Closing: How we associate fun with children, but actually we can have it, too
- Bonus sound
Feel free to jump to any section that you want to read!
PS: I give out a bonus music that you can play with this blog post. I happen to listen to this song when writing this blog post, and the music really put me into the writing mood! 😀
I’ve worked on this blog from when I was in junior high school, and looking back at some of the posts I made back then, I found out how easy it was for me to write flowingly, and how effortless those writings were. This looking back thing keeps repeating itself more and more recently, as I grew and made my first steps into adulthood, and It’s funny how I always thought of adults as cool people, when actually it is cooler to be a kid with no limit in expressing her/himself, and no worry about life.
When I was a kid, I super like reading. I remember this started one summer on third grade, my mom took me to the bookstore, and let me splurge on story books and encyclopedias. Ever since that time, I’ve always bought books every summer break. This stopped when I was in junior high though, I guess my mother realized just how many books we have accumulated (enormous!), and I never did anything aside from reading books. Also my mom wanted to make my reading outputted into something, by encouraging me to become an author. Because, really, by the law of the universe, if you inputted something (reading), you should output something equal in value, right? (silently refer to Newton’s third law… 😉 )
I toyed with the idea of becoming an author for several times, but my skepticism always got into me first, and I always delayed my start at writing, or started something but couldn’t go beyond chapter 1. I guess, besides the pessimism factor, there was also the laziness factor…
As I grew up, I started to think more seriously about school assignment, college, and future work. Sometimes I think I am often being too serious, maybe because of reading too many books, and less time playing freely with friends and family?
Anyway, also because of my too-seriousness, I started to let my mind focus almost 100% of its capacity to very serious things, like doing homework, and thinking, and worrying, and started to decrease my reading frequency and quantity. I think much of my mind capacity definitely went into the worrying part, so I can say that the ratio would be homework : thinking : worrying = 1 : 2 : 7. As I took arhitecture education for college, I think my seriousness also hindered my performance, as in I couldn’t let myself play around and experiment with design possibilities. I also had the tendency to start good and gradually perform less and less. By performing this way, I really let down people around me that had high hope and expectation at the start of projects.
Not only I gave up the fun of reading, I wasn’t able to find a new hobby that can substitute it, and also by becoming more serious, I actually didn’t reach the outcome I hoped from my effort. I also became somewhat perfectionist, always chasing high standards, and in the end gave up before trying because I believed that I couldn’t reach the high standard that I was aiming.
As I spent more time without any hobby, or any fun things to do, my stress level started to go up, to the point where I think my stress just lodged there somewhere in my brain, and wouldn’t leave, no matter how hard I tried to get away from the stress.
Only at this moment, I realized how important having a hobby, or any activity that can help us realease our stress is. Some people may prefer gardening, some people drawing, trying make up products, swimming, skateboarding, playing musical instrument, and bunch of other things. These hobbies can bring some sort of a fulfilling feeling into our life, and lessen our stress by diverting our attention from the hectic and monotone everyday lives. In this way, our hobbies are like lamp posts we cand hold when there is a storm.
In my case, I really liked reading, but it was a pity that my hobby became a boomerang for myself, which made me abandon it in the end.
I guess I’m not alone, and I believe there are many people out there who are like me, struggling, but nevertheless trying, to find something that we can do to keep the stress away, or just find the fun in everything we do.
For my case, I think first I have to try to appreciate myself, and to not be so hard on myself as to set high standards on everything I do, which led to the consequences of overworriedness. I have to give myself the regular time-offs that I need, let my mind rest a bit, and do relaxing things. If I feel like reading a book, I should do so without self-critisizing myself. If I feel like watching a movie, I should do so without feeling that I did something sinful because I took a break from doing works / assignments.
I believe in this way, I can slowly but surely find a hobby or activity that can let me feel happy and fulfill my heart.
Last but not least, after we find a hobby, in my opinion it is really important to keep it like how you would a treasure. From my perspective, I think we can keep it by doing it regularly. So the idea is to do it maybe at least once a week?
And I imagine, people that are socially adapt and also coincidentally have a group hobby, can attach to their hobby easier, as the group members can all act like glue which other members can stick to, keeping the relationship strong, and at the same time the hobby going.
It is a pity that we often associate the label “fun” to children only, as many people believe that adults should not have too much fun, and should focus on serious stuffs only. From my own perspective, I think adults can also have lots of fun, but the difference with children is, adults should be responsible with how they have fun.
What do you think?
Ellen's Space 