Hello everyone! Happy Wednesday! I hope you are having a great week as we make our way to the weekend. We are in the negative temperatures this week, so needless to say it’s been a lot of indoor time filled with reading, baking, and movie watching.
I have a little bit of a different post for you today, as I wanted to share a recent life lesson; giving something a try and deciding to not pursue it anymore.
I’ll be speaking more in terms of hobbies and interests, but this can be applied to life, jobs, friends, and opportunities as well.
Every year, like many others, I like to set goals or resolutions for myself. These are things I want to try, work on, even eliminate in my life. You can read about this year’s resolutions here.
Since I graduated college five years ago, I have been working on finding what hobbies bring me joy and spending time on those. Finding hobbies comes with trial and error along the way. For example, I have always loved to read and I would consider reading one of my hobbies. I have set reading goals in years past, but as long as I read something every day, I’m content and reading is something that is so easy for me to incorporate in my day and makes me feel like myself.
In 2023, I set a goal to run a 5K. As someone who never enjoyed running, I was intimidated by the challenge, but I knew I wanted to achieve it. It turned out, I really grew to love running and found myself running more than a 5K. Since I set out to start running, I have run another 5K and two 10K’s and I’m currently training for a half marathon. I didn’t know I would love running so much if I never tried it.
I have always enjoyed cooking and baking. Since I was a young girl, I loved helping my mom in the kitchen. After graduating college, I wanted to sharpen my skills in the kitchen by cooking more, trying new recipes and baking sweet treats. This is another hobby that has brought me (and my family) immense joy!
But, not all hobbies work out. There have been different hobbies that I have tried and decided not to pursue and that’s okay.
For example, two years ago, I decided to grow a garden and I had pretty good success with it my first year. You can read all about it here. Last summer, I wanted to do it again but with more plants and it turned out to be not a prosperous as year one. You can see my recap here. I still got some fruits and veggies to harvest, but not to the extent that I got my first year. I’m still debating whether or not I want to try again for year three. Stay tuned!
There have also been some hobbies that I tried and it wasn’t for me, like piano. When I was in middle school I took piano lessons and did not enjoy it, nor was I good at it. But, I still tried it.
As an adult, I decided I wanted to give it another go. I downloaded an app and bought a year-long course and decided to teach myself how to play for a year, and it was a long year. I made time almost every day to practice on the piano. While some days were good and I could see myself making progress, others were painful to get through. I decided I would finish the year out with the course, but not renew it. I realized a hobby, which was supposed to be fun, was causing me more stress. Plus, it didn’t help that my dog was not a fan of my practicing (he would howl the entire time I would practice). It’s been a few weeks since I stopped playing and I honestly don’t miss it.
I’m glad I gave it a try and I’m proud I stuck it out for the whole year, but I don’t miss finding time in my day to practice or the howling dog. I already have new ideas for hobbies to fill my time in the new year, but for the time being, I’m at peace with a pause on piano. I don’t feel like I failed or gave up, rather, I’m glad I gave it the college try.
That’s the lesson I learned this past year. It’s great to try new things whether it be a hobby, new job, or friendship, but if it doesn’t work out, that’s okay. What matters is that the effort was there. As someone who hates letting herself or others down, this was a harder lesson to learn, but I’m grateful I learned it.
I’m eager to learn some new skills and hobbies in the new year and see if they are for me, if they are, great, if not, at least I tried.
I hope this encourages you to try new things and pursue new hobbies, interests and opportunities, but give yourself grace if it doesn’t work out.