Oftentimes we are so used to our daily routines, we don’t see the beauty in living an ordinary life on a day to day basis. We are so focused on hitting the next milestone in our careers, planning the next big holiday or trip and we think about where we want to be in 3 years from now, completely forgetting to enjoy the tiny things that make our everyday life more enjoyable than we acknowledge. I am by far no exception to this, but recently i was given the opportunity to set my focus on the small things in my daily life that bring me joy and peace and to reevaluate if i was going to come closer to the life i want to live.
End of May i got ill and was forced to take a break from working and everything else in my life. My condition wasn’t critical but i had to stay at the hospital for treatment for a week and a half. I wasn’t allowed to walk a lot and had to stay in bed most of the time. Being someone who works a physical job and enjoys doing sports and being active this wasn’t the funnest time i had recently. I knew it needed to be this way if i wanted the illness to cure fast but knowing this didn’t make it any easier. I found myself scrolling YouTube for hours just to be bored by what i was watching. It seemed like i had consumed all the content i was interested in after only a few days. Switching it up to movies didn’t solve my issue, just increased my indecision. Suddenly i had nothing to do with all the time i had in hospital. All the possibilities but i couldn’t decide what i wanted to do. When i came back home i thought „well, at least i am at home. There will be so much more i can do finally“. I still couldn’t do sports or work but i was able to sit on the couch instead of staying in bed all day. So my possibilities increased, due to having access to my computer to play some videogames and being in my own space after all, but i still couldn’t decide what i wanted to do with my time. There was no motivation to get going with something, no need to do it. It all seemed pointless to a degree because i missed a very important part. I wasn’t making progress in any direction i want to in my life and so i got in a rut where i would just watch pointless videos all day and would be pissed of by myself for doing so because i knew very well this wasn’t how i want to live my life.
But how did i get out of this rut? While writing this post i am still at home. Although i start to be more mobile again, i still spend a lot of time during the day sitting on my couch putting my feet up so they can recover. So you see just going back to my usual everyday life wasn’t really an option if i wanted to feel mentally better soon.
I have some hobbys i really enjoy doing and i want to pursue regularly but a lot of them involve physical activity. Things like riding mountainbike or motorcycle have to wait until i am fully recovered, not to mention lifting weights. This leaves me with reading, videogames and playing guitar as my hobbys i can actively pursue right now. This might sound like a lot of hobbys, but it still didn’t fill my need to „do something productive“ if this makes sense to you. And i couldn’t get out of this situation doing the same things that got me there.
So i sat on my couch and started thinking about what i could change to feel better and be comfortable with my life again. And to be honest the only thing that really had to change was my mindset regarding this rut i was in. I had all the things i needed to enjoy my everyday life even in my present situation. What made the biggest impact was switching from „I have the time to do these hobbys therefore i have to do them or should be doing them“ to „I want to do these things because i enjoy them therefore i consioulsy make time for them“. What seems like such a little shift in perspective makes a real difference because you intentionally set your focus in a different way.
In the first instance you feel almost pressured to pursue those hobbys. You have the time, so go do it! But do you WANT to do this right now in this exact moment? It’s a hobby, so it should be treated that way. There is no obligation to go after your hobbys in a periodic timeframe. For example it’s ok to not play the guitar for weeks and then pick it up four times a week because you saw a video that inspired you to learn that cool new song. Of course you may be out of practice a bit after weeks of not playing but does it really matter to you? Why do you play on the first hand? Because you simply enjoy it or because you have to, like it’s your job?
The most important part about hobbys is that they are fun to you. Nobody else has to understand why they are fun to you. I remember a conversation i had with an apprentice of mine a while back. He asked me what he could do on weekends, except going to the gym. So i told him to read a book, learn something new about a topic he is interested in or to go for a hike or a bike ride. He looked at me and just said he doesn’t want to do „old people hobbys“. We both laughed. He couldn’t understand why those things are fun to me. And i couldn’t understand why those things aren’t fun to him. We just knew those hobbys from our own perspective and this is no bad thing. It just shows that things you may consider extremly fun can seem boring or uninteresting to other people. Don’t let this bother you, just enjoy your hobbys even when you are doing them alone because you are doing them for you. Not for anybody else.
I think this is one reason we sometimes slowly stop enjoying our hobbys in our regular life, because we forget the main reason we’re doing them. We view them as something that has to be done frequently. Sure, if you want to progress within your hobby you have to do it frequently, but this shouldn’t take the fun out of it. Progress can be fun too and it’s a valid reason to stay on track but don’t be too hard on yourself. One missed workout because you really weren’t feeling like working out that day won’t destroy your progress of the last six months you were training consistently. It just means you missed one workout but maybe you feel super motivated to hit the gym the next time you planned to because of this one day off. And if you spend the time of the missed workout with someone important to you or with another hobby you had a good time with you still made progress in regard to building a life you enjoy living. And this is all that matters in my opinion. That’s what most people are trying to accomplish in their lifes. Being able to live a life they truly enjoy living and being able to do what they choose to do.
For myself this means managing the time each hobby gets in my everyday life and keeping it balanced between for example doing sports and playing videogames. Or deciding to play the guitar for maybe half a hour before i watch the next motorsport event. For me it feels much more like having a purpose in my spare time by sometimes restricting the time i take for a hobby. By having multiple hobbys i am forced to delibrately decide what i want to pursue right now and therefore making a consious decision what keeps it interesting and helps me stay on track building my life the way i want it to be.
Hopefully you found this post somewhat entertaining and maybe you can even take something away from it for your own personal life. If so i would appreciate it if you let me know in the comments or leave me a Like.
Until next time,
JustMeOnline
JustMeOnline 
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