The last few years, hobbies haven’t really been my thing. After getting home from work, I’d just start on a work-related side project. It’s a good way to feel productive but can easily burn you out.
The past couple months I’ve done a good job of changing that and making progress on a bunch of fun and personal activities I’ve wanted to do for a while:
- Running – Couch to 5K is a training program that helps you get into running by alternating running with walking. The iPhone app plays your music and tells you when to run and when to walk. I started a few months ago and have been making great, noticeable progress.
- Yelp – I depend on Yelp to find restaurants, doctors, car washes, dry cleaners, and pretty much everything else, but I’d never really given back and contributed to the site I find so useful. So, I decided to try becoming Yelp Elite, and am now making an effort to review every place I visit. It’s fun, and reminds me of how awesome it is to participate in a new online community.
- Physical Therapy – My left elbow has been a problem ever since I was a kid, and recently it’s become even weaker than it was before. I’m finally going to physical therapy to make it stronger and get back the range of motion I’ve lost.
- Reading – I haven’t read much since high school. Partially for lack of time, partially because I hated doing assigned reading. But the last 6 months I’ve gotten back into it, reading a bunch of comedy books from people like Chelsea Handler and Tina Fey to software and management books. The feeling of finishing the last page of a good book, closing it, and looking at the cover one more time having conquered it is hard to replicate (though I can sorta pretend to do it when finishing a book on my iPad).
- Learning a language – I took Spanish in middle school and Latin in high school, and remember very little of either. I’ve wanted to learn another language for a while and have been using Rosetta Stone to learn Spanish. I’ll let you know how it goes.
- Blogging – This one hasn’t actually started until this post. A few years ago I blogged all the time, but that eventually stopped. About once a year I’d redesign my blog and have the urge to blog again, but it always fades very quickly. My lack of blogging is due a combination of having no time for it and an odd desire to only post informative blog posts as opposed to opinions or questions. I have 7 half-written drafts dating back to 2009, and a giant list of topics to blog about. It’s time to break the silence and do something about them.
Hopefully this list will continue to grow and I might eventually have something to say when someone asks what my hobbies are.
