A need for fun and stress relief

After two and a half years of working full time after years of working part-time and before that being a stay at home mom, I'm beginning to find some balance in my life. The key word there is "beginning".

My nature is to be a very giving person. I give to my family. I give to my community. I give to my job. I get a lot of joy from that, but it's not enough. I was missing a criitcal element in my life and that was experiencing other joy that didn't involve doing for other people. That was out of balance because I get burned out. I get resentful. Like everything, too much of a good thing is still too much.

I knew that exercise was good for me, but exercise is not fun. Sure, it can be fun, but the idea of thinking about it is never fun. It's only fun after the fact. I can say, "Oh, that was really fun!" Going into exercise? "Ugh, it's 7pm and I haven't exercised yet for the day. Guess I better go do it." It's another chore, not true fun.

But what could I do for fun? My life is very, very full. I work full time. I have a second quarter time position. With my husband,  I home-school my 11 year old son. We don't have a cleaning service or a yard service (though we will probably get the latter this year to do weeding/mulching upkeep). I also do all the grocery shopping and cooking for the family - which includes for my 81 year old mother in law who lives with us. 

I could squeeze in time to join a musical ensemble or a meet-up group for crafting, etc., but then that becomes another duty - I would need to go somewhere for rehearsals and performances at times that might not work for me and I would need to practice, etc. No, I needed to find something I could do that would be fun and on my availability which is random. It needed to be something I could do at home, but what?

I used to bake a lot for fun and stress relief - cakes, homemade bread, cookies. But, I can no longer eat such things and I have tried to make such things for my family only, but that is too tempting. Not only that, it creates mess. I don't have time for adding in clean-up time. Well, I do, but that then becomes another chore. 

Hmmm... I also used to blog about baking and later about my weight loss journey and that was a stress reliever - writing about life. But I don't bake and my weight loss/getting healthy journey is a permanent yo-yo and while I write about it occasionally, I've lost my gusto for it.

I also used to craft and do home reno projects, but those too create mess. I need to find a hobby like my husband has - mess free! My husband plays chess and online trivia games. I needed to find something like that, but I hate playing games... not that!

The answer came from my son who is home from college for winter break. He started plunking away at the piano after years of never touching it. He's terribly rusty, but he's keeping at it. The years of lessons from his elementary and early middle school days were useful to him as worked on a piece little by little every day. He made it his own too. He brought up the keyboard from the basement. He hooked it up to the computer and started tinkering - adding in his passion for computer programming to music. So perfect for him. I asked him if it was a good stress reliever, and I got a typical non-answer from him, "Yes, sort of, I guess."

That got me to thinking. I used to play music for stress relief. I had filled that void after university with crafting and cooking and home reno projects. I could switch back to music, but I had tried twice before. Once quite feebly. I had gotten a digital piano to learn to play while my son learned to play. Turned out that I couldn't teach myself easily and then our second son was born and all time and energy left me. I can play super simple tunes with one hand with lots of mistakes by sight reading or by ear, but I got discouraged by the huge amount of time it would take to even get remotely acceptable.

Another time I got sheet music for French Horn with CDs to play along with. I occasionally pull those out, but French Horn is just not a "let's pick up and play" sort of instrument. It's not full enough. It needs an orchestra or band and I'm not willing to try to join one because then it becomes another obligation in my life to practice and go to rehearsals on someone else's terms. It's also not shareable that way - it's me and the horn and the CD - one piece at a time with a very limited repertoire. That going boring pretty quickly. So again, what to do for fun?

But then one day, a day or two after Christmas, an idea came to my head while thinking and searching for something completely unrelated... that will be the next post.