One thing this pandemic has done to me is exposed some of my mental health issues and turned up the volume. I was struggling with a few things pre-Covid which have been exacerbated by this crisis. For example, I don’t have many hobbies and over the past few years I’ve lost any sort of passion for things to do when I’m not at work or with friends and family. I’ve blogged about it in the past, and in fact I have a whole category of blog posts related to hobbies (or lack thereof).

Someone I trust suggested I look to my youth to try to find some spark. She thought perhaps just experiencing some past activities might help me get unstuck. I thought about this for a bit, and one thing that came to mind that I loved to do as a kid was putting together plastic model kits. I used to build cars, planes, ships, spaceships, and more. All you needed was a kit, some glue, a little paint, and some time. It was with this in mind that I found myself wandering the aisles of a hobby shop in North Phoenix a few weeks ago and leaving with a model kit, a tube of glue, and a can of spray paint.

I definitely enjoyed the experience of putting together the model, but I will say I realized I don’t have a lot of skill when it comes to detail work. I got the model together, but when I was done there were a few pieces leftover and some parts I just looked at and thought to myself no way I can do that. SO my GTO doesn’t have passenger-side seatbelts or a shifter. Frankly, the shifter snapped in my hands while I was trying to get it free from the frame that holds all the parts. Oh well, it’s not perfect. But I painted it, and chose to go with the convertible vs the hardtop, and I think it looks pretty good for my first model since I was about eight.

I’m not sure I’ve found a new hobby. I don’t have a burning desire to run back to the hobby shop and buy another model. But it was fun and I used my hands.

In the same spirit, I went to Michael’s over the weekend to browse through arts and crafts sections to see if anything else sparked some joy. It was pretty overwhelming really. There were all kids of art supplies, crafts, beads and yarn. I decided I’m not going to find much joy in knitting, or scrapbooking, or painting (I have no skill there). I did decide to buy some markers and spend some time coloring mandalas — in the past I’ve found this to be quite a zen-like experience.

Since I’m still sort of laid up with a foot issue and there’s this little pandemic going on I am still going to keep my eyes open for hobby ideas. And without a doubt I’ll continue with the hobbies I do have even though they are pretty passive — watching movies, reading, blogging.

But I’m really curious about what others do in their spare time (assuming they have any). Seriously, I want to know about your hobbies and why you like them. Reply to this post or post under the link where you first saw this blog post.