My favorite part of school was summer vacation. I still love this time of year. In the US, we celebrate Juneteenth (the last of the slaves were freed) and July 4^th (our independence from England). Queue the barbecue and fireworks! Dust off the flip flops and let’s head to the beach! Purchase the plane tickets or gas up the car and get ready to travel!

Now that I am adulting, I have traded two months off for two days per week. As much as I believe in maximizing those two days, I was finding myself wanting to spend more of that time sitting in a chair and binging Star Trek movies and shows. I told myself that I earned a day of doing nothing. I do believe that rest is important, but 48 hours of mindless binging and eating does not serve the soul.

I no longer have school aged children, but asking my younger cousins, nephew and nieces what their plans are, had me thinking about what I did to keep busy between the school years. On the last day of school, our anthem on the bus ride home was Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall (Part III)”. It was properly blasting from a cassette tape inserted in a boom box. The next morning, I was up early, no alarm clock needed, and ready to meet up with friends. We jumped on our bikes and spent the entire day at the beach or the pool. The Florida sun was beaming down on us with no SPF anything protecting our skin.

I realized how much I miss swimming. The pool sits 100 yards from my front door and in four years, I have never bothered to walk through that gate. Swimming always brought me to such a state of contentment. As much as I look for a place to manage stress, swimming would be the ideal choice. I know why I won’t. It’s the pressure of wearing a bathing suit in public.

I feel like we get away from the hobbies we loved as kids because we find ways they don’t fit into adult life. I remember when my ex was playing a casual game of baseball after 20 years of not picking up a bat. I was upset when he slid into 2^nd base and hurt his knee. Reminding him he had to go to work the following Monday, I asked him what was he thinking. Our adult responsibilities, and nagging mother to your child, can get in the way of what’s fun. Who doesn’t want to relive the glory days.

Some of you are fortunate enough to have turned your hobbies into jobs. I loved taking electronics apart to see how they work but doing it for a living has made it less fun after 15 years in the same career. I find that I would rather be on a bike, hiking on a trail, or writing. I feel like I am wasting my valuable creative time while at work. I’m missing out on sunny days when I could be outside. I attend yoga classes from home because 60 minutes is not enough to get to a class and back to my desk in time. So instead, I turned to happy hour with the girls and binging my plethora of streaming channels asking myself, why am I not living.

This is what lead me to setting goals for my life. I wanted more and did not want to be restricted by the 40 hour work week. I wanted time to jump on a bike and go riding outside instead of jumping on a treadmill and looking at my living room wall. It’s also what lead me to creating my blog and publishing my first novel. I needed an outlet from feeling like I just repaired all the computers in the world and then the next morning they broke all over again. I needed to rediscover the things that made me want to jump out of bed where no alarm clock was necessary. Just the pure bliss of living life.

Hobbies keep us inspired and our brains active. Art history was my favorite subject in college. I purposely took a schedule with Fridays off so that I can go to the Kimbell Art Museum. Friday is their free day. I get to see the newest collections which has lead to me seeing some of the greatest works of the past two centuries. It’s how I fell in love with the Japanese artist, Takashi Murakami. I have two of his pieces hanging on my bedroom wall. They are, of course, framed post cards that I purchased at the museum during his exhibition.

Standing there amongst his paintings and sculptures made me feel like a kid again. I was discovering something new. I find the same euphoria when I am hiking. As kids, we didn’t think twice about cutting through the trees to get to our destination. Now I find myself jumping at the sound of a twig cracking. However, one day while hiking at Eagle Mountain Trail Park in Fort Worth, I turned to see the source of the noise. It was two deer staring back at me. I haven’t seen deer since leaving the East coast, and even then, it was because they were running across the street.

Finding What’s Missing in Life

Think about what made you happy when you were a kid. Maybe even that thing your parents told you wouldn’t make money so you needed to get a real job. I like to think about what games I played when I allowed my imagination to run wild. Don’t forget to revisit the question “What do I want to be when I grew up?” Those are the places you find yourself. Observe what you watch on TV and the characters you relate to the most. What about you do you see in them? Look for the common things in activities that make you smile.

I encourage you to explore those past hobbies. Ask yourself what would it take to pick them up again? Do you need to take a class? Is there a meetup group? Maybe you just need the space required for the thing. Whatever the obstacle, it does have a path through it, and I hope you want it enough to figure out that path. The museum is free, but hiking required me to buy active wear and hiking boots. I also joined a hiking group at the company I worked for at the time. Committing to meeting others helped me to not have an excuse in the beginning. Now I hike because I love being outside again.

Learning something new is also good for keeping us cognitive as we get older. Our neurons degrade if we are not challenged. It’s good to keep the body in motion, but don’t forget about the brain. I am looking up classes to learn how to play chess. I haven’t played in probably 30+ years, and even then, I didn’t really play. While researching to write this article, I came across a story about Mendo Veljanovski who at 68, learned to ride a BMX bike. Nothing is impossible!

There are endless hobbies to keep us inspired for life. Whether you are gardening, playing golf, learning a new musical instrument or rock climbing, be passionate about the activity. Explore from a child-like point of view. Each day should be a good day. Our lives should not be defined nor be made to only feel worthy by the work we earn money doing. Our lives should be defined by how we live it and enjoy it. We should want to be known by what we taught the generation after us and how we treated others.

Find your passion if you have lost it. From my experience, happy hour was fun, but getting back to nature amongst the trees is more fun. Doesn’t mean I won’t meet friends for drinks or binge Star Trek, because I do practice balance. But when I feel like something is missing, I know where to go to find myself.

Stay young my friends, and happy loving thyself.

Portia