Making Time
You have to make time for your hobby, or find time for it. I have said this before but perhaps you don’t have time. You are taking care of a sick family member, you have to take care of the kids, you work 50 hours a week, you have to renovate your house, you are romancing someone, you are repairing a house, the inlaws are coming over, the dog died, the cat needs to go to the vet and the house you’re renting just exploded.”
Well first off condolences, but you would probably not be romancing someone while the in-laws are coming over, never works out.
Jokes aside, my point was simple, there is usually something important going on in people’s lives. Something is usually more important than your ‘hobby’. I get that I totally get that, I mean having to fix the exploded rental is kinda beyond my abilities and the insurance agency isn’t being real cooperative. The issue is this: Your hobby isn’t just your hobby. Why do you hobby? You hobby for a reason, and that reason for most people who paint miniature models is a form of stress relief.
For most people with painting that is how they achieve a ‘flow state’ this is where thoughts and actions are synchronised to such a degree that they are as one. In psychology, this is considered one of the peak mental states and is extremely good for you.
Some flow states are more Purple Haze and others are more The Only Thing They Fear is You but both are flow states it is simply the state of mind you are in when you work on what you are doing. Some have analogised it to a form of meditation.
So what you are really doing when you are making time for your hobby isn’t making time for your hobby, you are making time for yourself as a form of self-care. Sure it’s painting a plastic toy soldier but so what? Some people ring bells and it’s no weirder what you are doing. In fact, it doesn’t matter what your hobby is, it’s that it gets you that time to chill out and just be one with yourself going to the gym, painting on canvas or anything else.
The Practical
So when you are making time for yourself I have found that there are two practical ways to find time, one is stealing bits and pieces and the other is big chunks.
Small time
You have time. You may not believe you have time but you do, you might watch TV, you may do any other small task that consumes time, you know the drill here. There is some sort of thing that you can cut out that you can change so that you have a small amount of time to hobby each day, the issue is that it takes effort. Effort that you feel you don’t have but once you get into a routine you will find it a lot easier. It is about MAKING that time.
The other piece of time is to make better use of your time, when your driving, painting, or otherwise using your hands and you don’t need to be using your ears for something else, listen to an audiobook associated with your hobby. Or conversely when you are listening to something business related use that time for your hobby with your eyes and hands.
Big Time
Perhaps you feel as if you are not able to get a little bit here and there because you have BIG plans and you are going to do X and Y and Z not just X, Y or Z. This is what my wife and I did for our projects but in the end we ended up using the small time practices more. So what we did was this, worked extra hard on our various projects, because we are freelancers, now maybe you work 9-5 (What a way to make a living… Dolly has cursed me). However everyone has home tasks they need to get done, make a list, check it twice and get it done and make sure everything is free and then get yourself a few hours on the weekend or on a Friday night or whatever your time of choice is. This will get you some time to get that big project done.
As always I hope you found this helpful and one way to make sure you always make time is with healthy hobby habits and one of the healthiest hobby habits…
Is to…
Keep those brushes wet!