Hey Families,
From Justin Trudeau to my best friend, everyone around me is speaking of doom and gloom for this winter ahead. And for a person who normally LOVES winter, it’s really getting my stomach all up in knots.
For the past 4 days I have been asking myself over and over and over again: “How are we going to get through this winter?”
We live in a SMALL space, the four of us. This summer we cleared out our belongings like no other, abandoning things left right and centre to make more space to exist during this winter ahead. And now it feels like there was no point. This winter is going to be DARK, no matter how much space we have or don’t have.
But I have HOPE. Somewhere. A little.
This afternoon, as my partner was making dinner, I decided what will get us through winter is HOBBIES. And then I realized we don’t have a ton of them, or at least none any of us does regularly. I think they’ve always got a bad rap - I recall rolling my eyes when I was little and someone asked me what my “hobbies were”. (shopping and watching MuchMusic, duh). So we all spent a good 30 mins just saying out loud hobbies that exist in life. A hobby brain-storming session if you will.
Hobbies like: sewing, snowshoeing, tree identification, birdwatching, carving, cooking, reading, yoga, colouring, quilting, listening to music, making music, singing, watching documentaries, hiking, embroidery, weaving, gardening, board games, scrapbooking, drawing, writing, organizing, crafting…the list goes on.
I think the notion of a hobby has gone out the window with our (old) world going at the frenetic pace it was. Hobbies require us to go into ourselves to learn more about who we are and what we like to do, all while slowing down. Hobby time probably in a lot of cases has been replaced with scrolling, scrolling, scrolling…
Surely, hobbies won’t make the pandemic, impending economic collapse, political nightmares, or any of the other giant world problems go away, but they can help us on a day-to-day basis pass the time. We are collectively going through immense grief and unlearning and as we incubate and integrate all these massive changes into our bodies, we need something to do. Something that calls us into the present moment with ourselves and our children.
So this is the winter of the hobby. At least in our family. That and being outside as much as we possibly can.
Wishing you all a little lightness in your thoughts around this winter,
Megan