I had decided to start these new(ish) hobbies last year, but it was at the start of this year that I properly set everything up to make it easier for me to do them consistently. Including putting together a little tracker in my diary for most of them so that I could tick off when I did them. It's only been a couple of months but this is how they're going so far.
Skateboarding - this is still taking a little while to get myself into actually doing it and that's probably because it's something I have to do in front of other people which always makes me uncomfortable. There's also quite a big possibility of me hurting myself, which I always worry about as it could affect my ability to do my job. However, if I want to learn this skill I do need to get over that, especially as I could also hurt myself just tripping on a pavement. I usually wait until my husband is off on the same day as me so we can do it together, but that has led to there being very few times available to do it so I've stopped doing that and now just go out on my own on Saturday mornings, with my bike helmet on regardless of how it looks. I do feel that I am beginning to get the feel of it a little bit more.
Flute practice - I've been managing to practice this around once a week. Obviously more often would be better and as I get more into the swing of it I'll probably try practicing on the weekends as well. It's really just finding the time to fit everything in. It is beginning to come back to me, but it's still frustrating to not be able to play how I used to. I'm going to give myself until the end of this year to see if I want to keep going or not. At least I can now string a song a long, even if it's not particularly well.
Drawing - again I have managed to get this in about once a week. At the moment I'm just practicing drawing the shapes that become animals from a book I brought on how to draw Kawaii animals. However, I do want to start being able to do this on my own and I think I might need to look a little more into the reasons behind each shape that then becomes a being. I also want to look a little more into how to actually draw the human shape if this is going to lead to where I hope it will, so I'll need to find something on that as well. Again, I'm giving myself until the end of the year to see how this goes and after that, I'll decide if I want to keep going.
Board games - we actually haven't really done this that often. In fact, it had gotten to the end of January and we'd only actually played some games once. So we decided we needed to make an actual effort and place the games in an area that was right in front of us, and now we are playing board games once a week as planned.
Reading - this is another thing that had already started to fall to the wayside before the end of January even came around. I realised that it was partly because I wasn't making time for it like I should have been, but also partly because I hadn't given myself the variety of things I usually like to have when I'm reading. So I've added a non-fiction book into the mix and the wildlife magazines I keep forgetting about and this has made things a lot more appealing. I might not be getting through as many individual books but I am getting the variety that I like and, in the long run, it'll actually lead to more books being read than before.
I am hoping that having a tracker I can keep ticking will lead to a number of these hobbies becoming habits. Unfortunately, it wasn't working particularly well to begin with, but now that I've made the rule that I'm not allowed to miss any of these two times in a row that has made all the difference in making me keep up with what I want to do. It may seem a little bit weird to do this with hobbies, but if I don't make time for them it's very likely that I'll never do any of them. There are a lot of hobbies I would like to try and do and if I keep on not doing any of them I'll always wondering about them and my abilities. This way I can keep trying new things, seeing if they are something I can take to, and then making a decision to keep doing them or not. At least this way I'll actually know.
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