Hobbies and their implied finances

Now that we're in the new house, the inevitable task of taking stock of my spending has come to the fore. Between required life maintenance spending and the random crap spending, I need to get things under control. And part of it also is taking stock of how much free time I really have, and evaluate what's important or enjoyable to me right now.

It saddens me, but it's been something that in a lot of ways has been dying slowly anyway-- my enjoyment of swapping and penpalling. I doubt I'll ever drop it completely, but with several folks offering to take my excess swapping materials, I'll be whittling that down to a comfortable low level hopefully over the next few months. It's an expensive hobby, and I'm not getting much out of it anymore because it's so overblown that I don't connect personally with that many people. I'm in a rut of superficial contact, and I don't like it. Not sure where I'm going to end up with swapping, but it's something I'll be working at.

My on-again, off-again enjoyment of cross-stitch is in a full on-mode, and definitely seems to be here to stay for a long time now, which I'm happy for. Stitching is meditative to me. Despite constantly counting charts and occasionally swearing profusely as I pick out miscounts, it helps me unwind from work. I enjoy it, and the resulting work is something tangible that I can see. AND... although he's a bit scared of it, Erich seems to admire my work, which helps me keep going through some of the more difficult sections of patterns. Not to mention that my mom is THRILLED that I'm stitching again. She's always loved embroidery (leaning more towards crewell herself), and has said many times how well I took to it.

And really-- it gives me a personal idiom for gifts to people. Only I'll let THEM pick the project I work on for them, so they don't get something they hate. :)

Gaming will be there for the foreseeable future as well, and thankfully that's mostly a time commitment. I'm now in only two games-- Erich's and the World's Largest Dungeon game over at Battleground. Both run only once per month-- one on Monday nights, one on whatever weekend date works well for folks. I can handle this. I'm happy with this commitment, and don't expect to get into any other long-term games.

Computer games-- no problem. I have several games to keep me occupied. Most aren't a play-once style. I have a couple on my to-buy list. I'll probably ask for them for Christmas.

Reading-- two hours of train ride every day makes this hobby so incredibly easy now. :) I forgot how much I missed reading during my commute.

So really, a lot just seems to come down to eliminating some penpalling, I suppose... now I just need the willpower to say "enough."

~ Mel.