Having a hobby of some sort has been important to me for a long time. However, having a hobby has always represented more than having something to do with my spare time, or something I engage in just for pleasure. There is something about having a hobby that fulfills the need I have to constantly challenge my brain. That need to be challenged is also the reason why I have had such a wide variety of hobbies.

I enjoy learning things. I enjoy the challenge of filling my brain with new knowledge and going from being totally confused, to having a fairly complete understanding of something.  My hobbies have ranged from cross stitch, to learning how to can my own food, and teaching myself how to crochet. I have also made my own beer and wine, raised chickens and rabbits, and spent over a year learning about herbs. Each one – in its own way – has been the challenge to my brain that I crave. The drawback to having the need to constantly be challenged, is that once I feel like a hobby is no longer fulfilling that need, I move onto something else. I am the queen of uncompleted projects, and left over hobby clutter.

One of the more interesting hobbies I took on was learning how to raise my own food, and how to can and freeze it. This hobby provided us with jars and jars of green beans, new potatoes, apple butter, pickles, and even pickled eggs. The pantry was not equipped to handle the influx of my canned goods. The only place I could think of to safely store all my hard work, was under my bed. Around my house, it was normal for me to ask the kids to “go get some food from under my bed.”

Our chickens were excellent egg producers. We had so many eggs coming in from our chickens, that every available space in the kitchen was filled with egg cartons and eggs. Eggs became a huge part of our diet. Deviled eggs, egg salad, eggs in tuna salad, eggs for breakfast, and eggs in my baking. I learned that it is possible to get tired of eating eggs. One way I found to use the eggs – without eating them – was to put them in an incubator and hatch chicks. My bathroom became a hatchery, and  my hallway became a chick nursery. I realized my children enjoyed my hobby of hatching and raising chicks as much as I did, when my son – while we were at a local park – stuck some goose eggs in his pockets and put them in the incubator when we got home.

The hobby I have stuck with the longest is cross stitch. I started cross stitching fairly simple projects when I was around 17 or 18. The thing that kept me cross stitching for so many years, was that it remained challenging to me. As I progressed in my cross stitching proficiency, I tackled increasingly difficult patterns. Every time I took on a new project, I would get excited during the planning and preparation process. I could not wait to get started. Once I did, I would spend hours and hours every day cross stitching.

Crocheting has probably been my favorite hobby. Because I taught myself how to crochet, it has been extremely challenging from day one. Once I had mastered things like scarves and blankets, I taught myself how to make doilies – those are harder than you think – and took on projects that used special crochet knots. I think almost everyone in my family has something that I crocheted. One Christmas I made hats for some women at a local drug rehabilitation center. I also had the opportunity to teach my crochet hobby to those same woman. I really enjoyed that, however, I am not sure the women did. They quickly learned that if they did not follow the patterns I gave them –  to practice with during the week – I would make them pull out all of their project, until they got to the point where they could fix their mistakes. Consequently, on the days I was supposed to teach, the women would go through great lengths to hide their projects from me.

There came a time in my life when nothing interested me. My hobbies were a thing of the past. I no longer had a desire to be challenged, or to learn anything new. I simply existed – barely. This was the time that I was experiencing a major depressive episode. It lasted for a very long time. When I started getting better, I fully expected – at some point – to feel the desire to start cross stitching or crocheting again. It never happened. Instead, I took on a new, and completely different hobby. Writing. Never before in my life have I enjoyed writing. The fact that I find it challenging and enjoyable now, has been a huge surprise to me. Pouring my heart out onto a computer screen has fulfilled more of my wants and needs than I anticipated it would.

I have a feeling that writing is going to be a hobby that I keep doing for the rest of my life. What I experience when I write, and how it makes me feel, is something different than I have ever encountered with any of my other hobbies. It does not just fill my need to be constantly challenged, but I also find it very soothing and relaxing. It allows me to have a creative outlet, and express my thoughts and feelings in the way I want to. There are no patterns for me to follow, and I am free to be as structured or unstructured as I want to be. It is wholly mine.

Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be. ~Abraham Lincoln

Really, Mr. Lincoln? Does that mean if I am not a happy camper right now, that it is my own fault? That I am responsible for losing my happy thoughts? You mean there is not a slow leak in my brain that is allowing my happiness to just slide right out onto the floor?

Well, now I guess that puts the matter of my own happiness, right in my own lap – or brain. I can choose to be content with what I have, with what is going on, and with what I have to deal with. Or not.

That seems easy enough. I will just choose to be happy. Starting now…..

Maybe it takes a few minutes to start working, cause I am not feeling it yet. If I cross my arms and stand on one leg….nope. Still not feeling it.

I think choosing to be happy is part of it, but I think making that choice – by itself – is not enough. Maybe I have to actually do something to reach a state of well-being and contentment. Something more than crossing my arms and standing on one leg. I think that if I am making the choice to be happy, then I must take some proactive steps toward reaching a state of happiness. That actually sounds like work. Possibly hard work.

What is so important about being happy that it would inspire me put some effort into obtaining it? There are so many people getting by without it. Getting by…not much effort involved. They do seem kind of sad, mad, weary, and leery. They do not have much to laugh about, or a bright spot in their day, but they are getting by. They do seem angry, and appear to have a hard time letting things go. Hostility and stress seems to ooze out of their pores. They are getting by though.

Are they really getting by? Or are they really just sitting there stewing in their stressed induced high blood pressure, and extra stomach acid. Possibly subtracting minutes, hours and days from their lives because of not being happy. Because of only just getting by. With nothing to brighten their day and lighten their load, I wonder if their days seem long and hard?

I want more in my life than just getting by. I do not want to stare at day after day with nothing to make me feel good. Just an endless stretch of…the same old thing. Not even a pleasant same old thing. Endless days spent recounting all the wrongs that have been done to me. Whining about how unfair MY life is. Stewing and brewing in my own juices of discontent.

Living a life of contentment seems so much more pleasant than just getting by. I guess putting some effort into being happy is worth it.

I could start with thinking about some positives in my life.  My family loves me. My little dog is fun to play with. My mind is healthier than it used to be. That took some effort, but it was not as hard as I thought it would be. In fact, it was pretty easy, and each positive thing I thought of made me smile.  I felt happy. I bet if I put a little more effort into it, I could find all sorts of ways to be happy.

There is something to what Mr. Lincoln said.  If I make the choice to be happy and then follow it up with the appropriate action, I am happy.  I have a feeling of contentment.

I was not feeling particularly happy when I began writing this. You can see the evidence of this in the argument I had with Abraham Lincoln. It is very difficult to write about happiness when you are feeling extremely unhappy.  I could blame my unhappiness on my mental illness.  Or I could blame it on the withdrawal from my old anti-depressant, or my reaction to the new one.  I could even blame my unhappiness on the fact that I am a 40 year old woman with fluctuating hormones. The fact of the matter is that is exactly what I was doing.  I was NOT taking responsibility for my own unhappiness and happiness.

Granted all of those things were contributing to my mood. However, I did not have to give them as much power over my happiness as I did.  I gave them that much power by spending most of my time concentrating on them, and not using one of the very first tools I gained when I began my depression treatment. Focusing on the positives in my life.

I do not know about you, but for me, achieving a state of happiness is hard work.  It was so much easier for me to be in a state unhappiness than it was to put any effort into being happy.  However, I was satisfied with nothing, not myself, not my family, not even with my life.  I had entered into a pattern of whining, crankiness, and wallowing in my own misery.  The more I did that, the more unhappy I became.

I was seeing new challenges in my life as difficulties rather than as opportunities to grow.  I was so busy wallowing that I was missing how many people I have in my life that were encouraging me, checking on me and challenging me to rise above unhappiness. It has been a good lesson to me about my ability to choose happiness and contentment over unhappiness and discontentment.  I may have faltered a bit, but in the end I chose Happiness.