Too Many Hobbies!

I have come to a terrible realization: I have too many hobbies.

Or maybe the issue is, I don’t have enough time. Someone asked me the other day, “How do you have time to read? Do you give up all of their hobbies or something?” My response was an emphatic: “No, I still do all the things I love.” But after assessing for a few days, I realized just how delusional I am.

I’ve only been on one hike in the last year, I haven’t walked my dog in months, my Prismacolor pencil set is packed in the back of my closet with all of my paints, I’ve only done a few stitches on my cross-stitch project in the last few weeks, and I haven’t touched my WIP novels in two years. O_o This is a problem.

Lately, I’ve been itching to do all of my favorite things, but just can’t seem to find the time. I work forty hours a week, have a baby at home, and what little time I do have I spend either reading or blogging. It’s not a bad life, and by all accounts I’m quite happy, but now that I’ve decided to get back to some of these other joys, I can’t seem to fit them into my schedule.

So what do I do? Since The Obsessive Bookseller’s theme of 2017 is Simplifying Life, the only thing I can do is simplify blogging by taking time away from it to work on other projects. Henceforth: I think I’m going to pull back from gung-ho blogging for a couple of months to see what other creative mischief I can get up to. It’s not a burnout or hiatus, it’s just a strategic step back. I’ll only be reducing my weekly posts by one, but I think it’ll go a long ways towards helping me allocate my time. I know I could have just made the change and probably no one would have noticed, but I thought I’d say something anyway and maybe generate a discussion.

Who else has this problem?? Not only would I love to hear what kind of hobbies you awesome people have outside of blogging and reading, but I’d also love to hear how you balance them all with life.

by Niki Hawkes