It’s funny because before I had children, when every second of my time was my own, I didn’t have a single hobby. I had no interest in doing anything productive with my time, I’m not even sure what I did other than watch really crap telly, and go out to the pub at the weekend. On our first night at home with newborn baby Cherry I realised just how different life was going to be, watching crappy telly wasn’t even possible any longer, after getting up five times to change nappies or pace the room to try and stop her screaming I had no clue what was going on. The baby brain and extreme tiredness meant that even if I was sitting there looking at the telly I wouldn’t really be concentrating on what I was looking at.
The reality of having no time for yourself is a big adjustment but one that I embraced because watching a newborn baby was far more interesting than anything I used to watch on the telly. For around six months I basically just spent my time feeding a baby and struggling to find the time to eat, drink or wash in the way all new mums do but then eventually Cherry started going to bed at a reasonable time and all of a sudden I had my evenings back. It was around then that time I started blogging because I felt like I had to do something more productive than just watch telly all evening, my few hours of free time became so precious that I didn’t want to just waste them. For a good few years blogging was my main hobby, I spent all evening doing it and this then led into me developing a love of photography. I went from not even knowing what a DSLR was to be able to use one in full manual mode, two years later and I’m still learning but the difference in my photos is huge.
Once blogging became less of a hobby and more like a job, albeit one I love, I started looking for other hobbies because I no longer felt like I wanted to spend my evenings blogging. I get up super early and work for about 4 hours then spend about 2 hours in the late afternoon working so I wanted something else I could learn to do to relax and switch off from ‘work’. This coincided with me starting my craft blog and crafting as a whole became a passion of mine but specifically I wanted to learn how to crochet and knit properly so at the start of last year that’s what I did. I love both of them but crochet is probably my favourite as I love the variety of things you can make. If you are interested to see my crochet projects then you can find them all over on my craft blog.
Now I’ve got to grips with the basics of crochet, and knitting, I want to find a few more hobbies as well as expanding my skills with some I already have.
A few months ago I bought a keyboard as we are homeschooling as I thought it would be good for the kids to be around music. Plus I have always wanted to learn how to play an instrument. Then a couple of weeks ago it felt like the right time to learn so using a book for kids that teaches all the notes I spend some time working through it and was surprised as how quickly I could read the music. It’s really addictive and each day I spend a bit of time practicing. I went from struggling to play any of this to almost being able to play it off by heart in a week so now I’m looking forward to getting some new music books. I would love to get a guitar and learn how to play that at some point too.
Next up is amigurumi, this is a type of crochet but it’s a bit different in that you use it more for making toys or stuffed things. It’s a bit harder as you work in the round and have to keep count of all the stitches which is hard for me as I get distracted but I have a few ideas of things I want to make.
Yoga is something I’ve just started but I want to really get into it this year, I’m the youngest in my class by about 30 years but it’s such a nice change from just going to the gym and I love the way it connects your mind to your body as well as the earth. It’s the one type of exercise I actually look forward to doing, I have a class this morning actually. It’s so relaxing but you can also really feel it working your muscles and I love the idea of breathing away bad energy and hopefully getting more flexible. I love the relaxation part at the end of the class too, I rarely switch off and completely relax so it’s really good for me.
I would also really like to start drawing, in fact today I’ve planned something arty to do with the kids as it’s something they enjoy too. Drawing and painting was the one hobby I briefly touched on before having kids so I would like to go back to it.
So these are some of the hobbies I would like to focus on this year, I might not have much free time but that isn’t going to stop me!
How about you, what’s you favourite hobby? Are you planning to start any new ones this year?
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