This is It’s Only in Trying — a weekly podcast about the beautiful messiness of becoming.
Find yourself a hobby.
There’s this growing body of understanding that we, in our current society, are depending or relying too much on the left side of our brain - the logical the part. The left side helps with executive functioning and the execution of our day-to-day boring tasks and there’s a failure to regularly reach over to the right side of our brain - the side that helps with creativity, love.
Recently, I’ve gone on a journey to try and figure out what my hobbies are. I had mistaken for such a long time, that caring for others was a hobby. Taking care of my child, my dog, the house… but, those are just daily necessities. Not hobbies. Those things, caring for everyone else but myself, took up all my time.
When I finally stopped to think about where I was spending my time, I realized I had cut out anything that resembled carrying for myself. There was so much that I didn’t actually have to be doing for anyone else because they are their own people… or dogs. And when I let others start doing things for themselves, there was now this chunk of time left that I didn’t know what to do with.
This new chunk of time gave me the opportunity to just go try things. I leaned into this yearning to dip back into my creative side. And it did something really fun. It unlocked this new excitement for me - not only am I now finding ways to be creative and bring a little bit more joy into my life, but I’m getting to use them in really unexpected ways.
I tried a little bit of everything including guitar lessons, running, knitting, but also writing - and not just journaling about my thoughts but creative writing and learning about creative writing. It had this unexpected benefit that I’ve been able to bring this new skills of storytelling into playtime with my daughter. Now instead of the Barbies just having another pool party - one of the Barbies is invisible and she’s hiding things around the house and the other Barbies have to go around and try and find them but it’s so exhausting to try and find all of these things that the invisible Barbie is hiding so thank goodness they have a dog that can poop out pizza and popcorn. How fun!So playtime become not just a reenactment of a life but a way to invent and laugh and be new.
So maybe your thing isn’t storytelling but maybe it’s that you so knit and now you can knit a new superhero cape for your child’s favorite superhero or stuffy and their new superhero hero power is love and they can fly around the house doing chores because they love their family… or maybe your thing is music and you can play an instrument. So, now while your child is playing you can narrate in musical form… For me it would be something like “Barbie‘s heading on a mission not sure what she’ll find as long as she’s got her snack pooping puppy they’ll never be in a bind…”I made myself with that one.
So finding a hobby is not just engaging the right side of your brain again, but it allows space to find yourself some joy - and it also lightens the rest of your life. And then those logical things that are day-to-day - You get to sprinkle them with some creativity.
My ask is that you go find a hobby. If you don’t have one yet, do what I did. Just go try a bunch of random stuff, start with something that a friend says they really enjoy, and if you don’t like it that’s fine. Put it down. Try something else. A hobby is meant for you to have something that not only engages that right side of your brain, the creativity, but also fills your cup. Brings you back up into being present here in the world today for yourself and for the ones you love. So give yourself some time go find a hobby, go find something fun, go be creative.
Just remember, you’re doing better than you think.
