RABlog Week 2017, Post 4: Hobbies - how they may help living with RA

Hobbies – Hobbies are healthy or maybe they are not? What is your hobby and how does it help you with your autoimmune conditions? If you do not have a hobby imagine a great hobby for a person dealing with RA.

Hobbies are one of those things that get bandied around within the chronic illness communities as a - by and large - good thing. In theory, they give you something positive to focus on to distract you from your disease and the difficulties faced day to day. It's something I struggle with, as a concept, because I'm not a big 'hobbies' person, perhaps because, many of the things people do as hobbies are things I do, or have done, professionally. So for me, they're not hobbies. They are, though, things that give my life meaning. 

I'm a writer. Apart from this blog, I write professionally for a ghost writing company. I've written articles for mainstream craft, art and design journals, locally and internationally. I have chapters in a book that was published about the Freemasons in Australia. There are education kits in a major Australian performing company and a Sydney museum that I researched and wrote. I started my blogs (I also have a hugely neglected book blog, which was my first of the two) so I'd have a place to write that didn't impose a brief. But I don't really regard blogging as a hobby - it's part of a larger writing practice. It's just the place where I get to write what I want.

I'm an artist. I draw, paint, create mixed media works, and I work in clay. I'm tinkering with photography too. I've exhibited and sold all over the country. I've taught - art, and art history and theory. At the moment, due to lack of funds and studio space, I can draw, but that's about it. I'm struggling to find the right headspace though - I have ideas that could get me going again producing steady work, but I also need to find outlets. It's energy to make the list and go scouting that's holding me up there. Again, it's not something I do for the fun of it. It's professional work and I aim to be selling it. Very long term, my ideal situation would be to have a home based studio that's set up for a mixed practice, with a kiln for ceramic work, where I could maintain my own practice, and also run small classes for adults. That's going to require some very different financial circumstances to where we are at present though. 

I'm a musician. I'm a classically trained singer and was part of a major opera company chorus for fifteen years. As well as chorus, I had some small bit parts and understudies. I've also fronted big bands and concert bands as a soloist. I was a member of Australia's only professional Jewish choir in Sydney. Right now, I'm up to my eyes with my synagogue's community choir being part of the High Holy Days services. Yom Kippur starts at sundown tonight and goes through all of tomorrow. I've been a singing teacher in my time too - in schools and privately. 

Even food, for me, has a professional base, so while I do enjoy cooking, it's something I've done professionally, and that's always there in the background. That professional experience isn't something that goes away after you finish working in an industry.

So, I'm a creative, a professional creative, with skills and experience across a few different fields. It makes crafting a hobby out of these activities impossible, because my head is in a professional space when I do them, and that brings its own pressure. It's something I find other creatives who've worked professionally in their fields understand. Those who enjoy many of the activities I do as hobbies, don't... For them, it's an escape. The activities are something that's different from the rest of their lives, and it gives them that place to do something for themselves that IS separate, and just for them, and fun - it's play. None of these things have been 'play' for me for a very long time. I'm not unhappy about that, but herein lies my difficulty with the concept of hobbies....

I DO have an escape. I'm a reader - a voracious reader. My kids used to tell people I ate books. Even the Stepson started giving me his school books of an afternoon saying I could have it to read because he knew I'd have it back to him in the morning, finished, to take to school again... To that end I have an enormous home library - many thousands of books. There are two major fiction collections - adult and children's. They cross many genres. And I read them all. That's a criteria for them to remain on my shelves. If I don't re-read it in a year, then it goes. Books take me places. On a bad day, I can tuck myself up on the couch with a blanket, the cats and tea, and get transported to wherever the current book is set and become part of someone else's life and adventures for a while. Oddly though, reading is still not something I see as a hobby. For me, reading is like breathing. I can't not read. I ALWAYS have a book with me, and usually have a couple on the go at the same time. 

My range of activities is broad enough that there's usually something I can find to do to pass time, and connect me with other people, regardless of how crap I'm feeling. At worst, I hibernate with a book and populate my immediate world with the characters from the books I'm reading - they have the benefit of not requiring me to find the energy to be polite or look after them! 

So, having established that while I have any number of ways I spend my time, but that I don't regard them as hobbies, the thing I WOULD say is that human beings are creative creatures, inherently. So, if you don't have something creative that you do that's apart from your normal day to day activities, and something that offers you time out and an opportunity to meet new people, then get out and find something. The online world has opened up numerous opportunities for group activities that you can do from home too, so not being able to get out physically needn't be a block to that either. The photo challenge I do on Facebook has introduced me to many new people, and has lead to my photography improving out of sight - and that's with me only having a phone camera for digital photography. I've even met people face to face in the group for planned photography meet ups. So, there ARE things...and they do make a difference when you can get to the end of the day and look at something you've done, someone you've spent time with or spoken with that's, for a little while, taken you out of the day to day thing of being ill.