A true key to work-life balance!
It’s time for a new hobby. With warm weather finally peaking through this long, long, winter, it’s the perfect time to find a creative outlet to keep you sane while the semester wraps up. The things we must do often overwhelm the things we’d like to do and it’s important to find a balance before you burn yourself out.
One of the main things to keep in mind when starting a new hobby is that it’s good to be bad at it! Don’t be discouraged by how much it feels like you have left to learn, or by how awful you think you are compared to people with more experience. Cliché as it is, you must remember that everyone starts somewhere.
I recently realized the difference in hobbies that have different outcomes. I’ve always been drawn toward artistic/crafty hobbies, like painting, sketching, knitting, playing piano, etc., but then I quickly become frustrated with my own lack of skill. These are all hobbies that require you to produce something, and as hard as I’ve tried to just enjoy the action of painting it’s still hard to feel satisfied when my finished canvas looks like a wreck. Of course, that’s part of the process; it’s natural to lack skills in something you don’t do often, but the issue is that I often get sucked down a rabbit hole of perfectionism and spend too much time on that new hobby until I feel like I’ve become good at it. Sometimes that’s kind of counterproductive to the concept of using a hobby as an outlet because it evolves into something that takes up more of my energy instead of providing me with a cathartic, refreshing experience.
These types of hobbies can still be rewarding if you don’t get too wrapped up in the final product, and if you encourage yourself to celebrate the small victories (like learning to knit the first row of a scarf, or playing both hands to the intro of a new song on the piano!)
However, I seriously advocate for the hobbies that don’t have an outcome: the things you do just because you enjoy doing them.
My dad and I recently took a birdwatching class, and it may have been one of the very best Saturday mornings of my life. You don’t walk away from birdwatching with anything tangible (besides cool photos to show to other birders, I suppose) but just walking around a forest preserve with a group of wonderful, passionate people and borrowed binoculars was the most soul-reviving experience I’ve had in a while. It was something I found myself so easily wrapped up in, as we took turns pointing out the birds we noticed and their interesting flight patterns, exciting colors, and the songs that they sang.
Birdwatching isn’t the only hobby like that, it’s just the first time I noticed the key difference in the two categories of hobbies. If that sounds boring to you (I won’t be offended, I know it’s not for everyone), there are so many others! You can remove the goal of the result from more productive hobbies/crafts, or try something like learning the patterns of the constellations in your area or teaching yourself to meditate.
It’s always good to have something you can look forward to doing alone so that your happiness doesn’t depend on the availability of others. Hobbies that you enjoy doing on your own are extremely important to maintaining a healthy balance between your academic or workplace success, social life and contentment. Try something new this spring and look forward to spending more time with it this summer!!