When I’m depressed or anxious, sitting around and doing nothing is the absolute worst thing I can do. I need to get up and move around or focus my brain on something other than the dark clouds hanging above my head. Grounding, breathing exercises, and meditating help, but I find that nothing soaks up time and is as gratifying as working on a hobby. They leave me in a better mood and sometimes I learn something, which also makes me feel good.
Everyone should have at least a couple of hobbies. I’ve got dozens of them. In fact, I have to rotate which hobbies I’m actively doing or my attention is spread too thin and I don’t get anything done on any of them. Bass guitar, lock picking, electronics, astronomy, (micro)biology, welding, writing, motorcycle riding and maintenance, computer gaming, collecting (and listening to) records, colouring, painting, reading… I could go on for a while, but you probably get the point.
I find the only problem I have with hobbies is that on the days where I have to fight hard to get out of bed I can rarely motivate myself to sit down and do something. It’s tricky that way – sitting down at my electronics bench would make me feel better, but to summon the oomph to do it can be very difficult.
I’ve got to keep working on it, though. Nowadays, it’s a lot easier to convince myself that something that I used to find fun before I became ill will still be fun now. I still have days where I can’t do anything (like earlier this week), but sometimes even just knowing that there are fun things to do when I get up helps.
I think I’ll do some posts on the different hobbies I have. Some of them may be topics that others had never considered before but may find interesting. Do you have any hobbies that you enjoy even when you’re not feeling well?
Stay safe!