Hobbies

I went running this morning. At 6:15. It was great. I've been halfheartedly thinking about becoming a runner for quite a while now, and the idea was cinched with a conversation I had with Leah the other day about hobbies.

L: What's a hobby?

M: It's what you do for fun, when you don't have to do anything else.

L: Like what?

M: Like... umm.... you know, like when Mommy... or when Daddy... does... something... fun...

See, it's not that we don't have hobbies. I love to play the piano, sing, read, blog, and I used to bike fairly regularly for fun. Jason used to play paintball and golf, and he likes biking and is getting into gardening. We used to play racquetball a lot. We used to hike and sing in the choir. I used to make handmade cards all the time, and I was learning how to sew and play the organ. We did family history work and we love to travel. Jason likes to cook, and I like to bake.


But then we had kids. Excuses, excuses, I know, but hobbies were put on the back burner, and it seems they never came off. Having kids is a fantastically rewarding and quite time consuming lifestyle, and there aren't many moments during the day when I wish I had something else to do.

But I'm going to do this. It feels good to do something for myself, especially when that something doesn't require any money or baby-sitters. And the kiddos aren't going anywhere anytime soon, so I should probably learn to fit my hobbies in around them.

So, in an effort of blog-accountability, here is the plan- I am going to run a 5K at the end of the summer. I'm going to start running three times a week for at least 45 minutes. I have a running partner to keep me motivated and, as long as I get up early in the morning, running won't interfere with all of the fun I already have scheduled during the day (tea parties and dolls! diapers and cars!).

And hopefully I'll be able to call running a hobby before too long.