Hobbies & Interests
For a lot of people these are things done for simple pleasure but through personal experiences I’ve used them for much more. I’ve used these things as a means of escapism and a tool to maintain an amount of “control” to my life. I’ve displayed (and still do) compulsive tendencies towards things of interest, even to the point of boredom with a subject, yet the routines keep me coming back. Luckily I’ve never had any unhealthy habits that may have been harmful to me or others. I can imagine if the feeling of safety could be brought about by one though that it wouldn’t be hard to fall into one.
At a young age I had a good balance between doing outdoor activities and playing inside. I was willing to try a good number of new things without feelings of anxiety or worry of “what if” situations. One of the biggest draw backs I found was that my lack of imagination could hinder my enjoyment of certain games. An example of this would be playing “army” where I had to imagine I had a gun. I simply couldn’t suspend reality enough to enjoy the game without physically having a toy gun in my hand. I think that may have contributed towards me eventually shifting towards video games to compensate for my lack of imagination. It allowed me to become immersed in fantasy without feeling the need to question it.
To a certain degree I’d put my lack of interest in reading down to my poor imagination. When I was young through to my teens I could never become involved in the plot of a story when I read a book if it was fictitious. This oddly changed if it was factual as I knew that what I was reading had happened at some point so I could accept it more easily. I could even picture the scenarios in my imagination as I wasn’t asked to produce them myself. If anyone else is in this type of situation one of the best things I could suggest would be to find books on their interests. A good example of this would be “The Lord of the Rings.” Watching the films of this would give a good base for the imagination as a good portion of the characters, locations and plot would be in place. The books go into greater depth than the films could possibly cover, however, this wouldn’t be a problem as the interest to read would be there through strong foundations laid by the films.
Interests that I’ve gained away from having to use my imagination I’ve been guilty of bordering on the obsessive with. They start out just for pleasure but as I attain a level of competence with an activity I get the drive to get better; I then try and push myself to limits that are sometimes unrealistic. This in turn leads me to get frustrated with myself to the point of sheer frustration and being disheartened. This, as I’m sure you can guess, is a good way to whip through interests lol. I’ve now learned to cope with my little episodes by taking the time to get the frustration out of my system and then evaluating things. Once I’ve calmed myself, i realise it’s often a case of striving too far too fast.
I’ve found that the best way to keep myself from doing this too often is to make myself a log of progress. I’ll include goals that I’d like to attain and pencil what I feel to be a realistic time scale. I give myself space to write comments in such as my mood at the time of doing the activity and how I feel the progress has gone for that day. Writing information on how I feel allows me to look back and see if there’s any correlation between the days when I feel things are going well and in the same regard, not so well. From the information I have, I can then adapt my plan to better suit my needs.
Another way to keep myself from becoming overly enthralled with one particular hobby/interest is to try new things to keep me entertained. Some things are nice and easy to try and don’t require a huge amount of planning, just a few things buying in. Others activities that need a bit of planning give me something to look forward to doing in the future. If you want ideas for new things to try but aren’t the most creative person (like myself) then a good thing to try is going to a search engine and typing things in such as “hobbies list” or “activities list”. This can bring about some fun and interesting ideas to try :-)