Last month, I purchased a brand new, super fancy sewing machine and made plans to participate in National Novel Writing Month, a big novel writing event that takes place in November every year. I was planning to get a hobby, outside of my desperate attempts to stay on top of my favorite TV shows and pretending to maintain this blog. Then I switched roles at work and have gone back to working 50+ hours a week every single week and we started looking for a house (a whole post unto itself), Isla stopped sleeping (another whole post unto itself), and all those plans fell apart.
It’s frustrating. I have half an outline for a romance novel I’ve had in my head for over 10 years but have been “too busy” to put down on paper sitting in my Google Drive account, and my mom got halfway through setting up my sewing table before discovering a nut needed to secure the platform in place got lost in one of our last 3 moves (my sewing table hasn’t been used since 2011.) I’ve been too busy to finish anything. I’m so far behind on most of my shows, at this point I’ve given up even on catching up on them. (I love you, Nashville and Scandal, but you’ve been culled from my must watch list.)
I’m running on empty. I’ve been sick twice in less than a month, I can’t remember the last time I got a good night’s sleep, and my job has me so stressed out right now, all I want to do is call in sick for a week straight and lay in bed drinking tea and reading books instead. I’m looking forward to the Thanksgiving holidays with a bit of desperation. Not that they will be particularly restful, considering I will spend the whole time chasing Isla.
What I really want is a hobby. Something I can do for me. I just want to carve out a few minutes out of my life every day to do something that doesn’t revolve around doing things for other people or just zoning out for a while because I’m so stinking tired of thinking. I would like it if it were something creative and productive.
Do any of you parents out there have hobbies? If so, how on earth do you make time for them?
Only exercise. Everything else gets lost in the way you’ve described above. I think I’m going to try to forget about it until our early kid days are over!