Hobby Block – How To Overcome It

Suffering from Hobby Block is a dreadful thing, but overcoming it has never been more simple.

Not long ago, I went through a long period of time where I did not feel like doing any of my hobbies. I was never in the mood for it. It wasn’t the right time of day. Silly excuses, I know, but these excuses are the reason I began to feel stressed, unsatisfied with my life, and unproductive.

There was one period of my life where I stopped doing a hobby that used to be the biggest part of it. I stopped because life became busy, and my hobby took too much time and effort. As I took a break from it, by the time I was less busy, I couldn’t seem to be in the mood for it anymore. So I stopped completely. I thought it didn’t satisfy me anymore, but what I didn’t realize was that the reason I wasn’t in the mood for it was because it is what gets me in the mood.

You mustn’t wait for things to happen. Go make it happen.

What I’ve realized with a lot of my hobbies, especially the ones that take time and energy, is that I never actually want to do them. However, I feel this obligation to. And it doesn’t feel good. In fact that feeling is what I keep referring to as “not being in the mood”. The thing is, I do my hobby anyway. I suck it up and take that dreadful step. Soon after I do, I find myself swept away in my work. Suddenly I’m enjoying it and spending more time on it than I intended simply because I am now having fun.

I find starting my hobbies to be the most difficult when I get in my own head and begin thinking about the process of myself doing it.

For Example: In my writing.

If I feel the obligation to write something, suddenly I find myself thinking about all the technical aspects of it —

• Sitting down in one place for an extended period of time.
• Having to think through things and find the perfect way to say what I mean.
• Patching up holes in my writing so everything makes sense. 

If somebody were to try and convince me to become a writer with that being the description of the job, I would change my career path immediately. That sounds so boring, right?

So we mustn’t think about the technicalities. I find it better to think about the feeling it gives you when you’re doing your hobby.

When I write I am conveying my imagination onto the page. Whether that be a fictional story or lessons from my personal life, as I am sharing here, I get to find the words that make me sound and feel good when I read them aloud. I get to share something that is important to me. That makes me passionate which makes me write better. I find that when I am passionate about a subject, it types its way onto the page far more easily than if I were not and hat makes me excited. 

Right now, I am writing this and I am excited because I am sharing something that I struggled with and figured out how to overcome. Which allows the possibility for me to help other people to achieve things they are proud of and to help them feel happiness and a sense of purpose and productivity. 

I find I feel the best when I am creating.

As you can see I put in bold and italics the feelings I get. Because we are creatures of feeling. Our whole lives we are chasing feelings. We’re never really just chasing after a thing. We chase the feelings those things give us.

• We chase after a person to feel love.
• We chase after a job to feel secure.
• We chase after body goals to feel confident.

So if you ever find yourself wanting to want to do a hobby, but you don’t feel “in the mood” for it. Just get up and do it. And hype yourself up by thinking about the feeling it will give you. Because how good will you feel when you complete that painting and have something new for your wall? Or when you finish that book and feel as though you’ve lived another life?
Once you start you won’t want to stop because you’ll be having so much fun. And if you’re not having fun, you’re probably doing the wrong hobby for you. So get out and try them all. It’s never too late to start. But you must start.