Most often when I am looking for fulfillment I turn to my hobbies, which over the course of my life have changed and evolved. Currently I have three or four primary hobbies. I paint, write, learn Italian, and garden.
Gardening is a Cyclical Hobby
As we have moved through the winter, the one I haven’t been able to do is Garden. As we approach spring, this will change in a hurry. Because I live in the south, the garnering season is extremely long and it’s about time to start mulching the beds, pruning trees and the hydrangeas and getting ready for the daffodils to start coming up.
It’s not surprising that this is the hobby that I am currently drawn to the most and at the same time, the others have seem to taken a dip as far as my interest is concerned. Its not that I don’t want to do them, its just that they have become more routine and don’t give me the same satisfaction as doing something that I haven’t had the chance to do in a while.
Having a Reward at the End Helps
After my trip to Italy in 2025, I noticed that my desire to learn the language fell off, because the carrot of getting to go to Italy and use it was no longer on the table. Now with something like a language, if you don’t use it, you start to lose it, so it has been important for me to keep in touch with the language without actively using it per se. I’ll read the news in Italian, or watch some short videos in Italian, but I’m not actually working on grammar or anything like that.
Don’t Let Your Hobbies Become Work
I feel that when a hobby feels like it’s becoming work, it’s best to back off for a while and let it breathe. With one caveat. Set a timeframe that you are going to step away from the activity but then come back to it. Maybe thats a month, or maybe in the case of gardening, that is a winter, but stepping away and set a calendar reminder to come back to your hobby after that time period.
Once you do, you will be reinvigorated and remember why you loved the hobby so much in the first place and will continue on your journey to becoming better at it. This is quite different than stopping indefinitely and having to re-establish yourself into whatever you are pursuing.
After all, even with hobbies, sometimes we just need a break.
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