On Hobbies, Mental Health, and Achievement
I have a lot of hobbies. I run a Dungeons and Dragons campaign set in Matt Mercer’s Tal’Dorei game setting. I also play my Tiefling Warlock (DnD 5e) and my Human Envoy (Starfinder) on alternate Thursday nights. I love to bake. I love to draw and colour and paint. I love to write; creative writing as well as real life experiences. I love experiencing new foods and drinks; I love coffee and tea and cake and fruit and cheese and beer and flavoured gins and goddamnit if I don’t really love a simple bowl of cereal. I love going for eight+ mile hikes in the countryside. I love to read. I love playing boardgames. I love consuming media — cartoons, Netflix shows, electronic music, swing music, Disney films. I love stargazing. I love sitting in a hot tub. I love history; finding out about who was here before us and why they did what they did. I love my job SO MUCH. I love talking about autism and social communication to anyone who will listen. I love doing home improvements, I love hosting dinner parties. I love the city; I love the beach. I love taking photographs of the colours of the leaves in autumn, the first blossoms of spring, the hoarfrost in winter, the hazy blue skies of summer. I love to dance. I love learning German. This list is not exhaustive. But it’s unbearable trying to meet the perfectionist within myself and to try and be really, really good at all these things when there physically isn’t enough time in the day. Not to mention my commitments to being a good friend and at least a half decent wife.
To use a DnD term, I see myself as an IRL bard, and have spent the first 31 years of my life becoming the epitome of a jack of all trades. I’m “alright” at being a Dungeon Master, and people seem to have fun at my tables, but then people start making suggestions about what I could do to be even better.
I look at all the other things on my list and end up having a little conversation with myself that goes along the lines of:
“But where will I find the time?”
“Somewhere … it’s worth it to be a better DM right?”
“I guess sleep could go. Maybe I could put off reading that book I’ve had 6 people recommend to me, or that show that everyone’s already started spoiling anyway. Maybe I just don’t bake this week. Or draw”
And what actually ends up happening, is I become so paralysed by the indecision, that I just don’t do anything.
Here’s an additional factor. I have OCD. It’s only mild, but I have to be very aware and hyper-conscious of not pushing myself too hard. Because if I try to burn the candle at both ends, it’s not everyone else who wants to read my writing or see my drawings or hang out over a coffee who ends up suffering. It’s Husband and I. Firstly, the paralysis caused by the indecision means I maybe don’t clean the bathroom this time, in favour of trying to bake and draw and do some exercise. Except you can’t fit three things into that one slot, but I’ve committed to them now, so then the hoovering doesn’t get done either. And over the course of a week, I begin to look around and feel too exhausted, too tired to face scrubbing the top of the oven. But it needs to be done because otherwise everything else will get contaminated and I can’t eat or feed my husband or touch anything in my house. And then my heart rate speeds up, and I start tensing up, and I need to take more time to just calm down because to quote a well-known comic book figure, “you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry”. Honestly, writing about how debilitating even mild OCD can be, could be a whole separate article, and it gives me a huge amount of empathy for people who have it really bad.
In order to try and move past this, I’ve been taking time to try and learn how to be okay with just being “okay”. I know an awful lot of people who fall victim to the perfectionist when actually, not everyone is cut out to save the world, be a world famous musician or actor, start a million dollar company, or be the next Prime Minister (although looking at our current PM makes me wonder if it isn’t a bit easier than I thought it was). Statistically in fact, most people are not like that, and I think it can lead to a lot of mental health complications around not feeling “good enough” when you’ve grown up being told that the world is your oyster, you can achieve anything if you work hard enough.
I’ve been learning to say not right now, or if I’m particularly brave, an outright “no” to people who would like to see me put even more time into something that I do not have the time for.
I’ve been learning to recognise the benefits of just doing the things I love, simply because I love them. What if I just want to achieve happiness? What happened to contentment instead of over-achievement? Why should I try and publish my creative stories, or sell my art?
I wish that was actually more of an acceptable way of thinking across the board, for my friends who I know suffer from the same challenges as well as for myself. I probably won’t ever be as good a DM as Matt Mercer, but that’s alright. I probably won’t ever bake to a professional standard, but I’ve not yet given anybody food poisoning! I doubt I’ll ever sell my character illustrations, but I like them, and my friends seem to appreciate them. It goes on. For me, in order to get out of the destructive, obsessive behaviours, I’ve had to realise that the value in things isn’t in being the best or the achievement at the end, but just in enjoying the experience and journey along the way.
I also may have written this while struggling to decide whether to paint a mural on my wall, clean my bedroom, or bake some cookies. C’est la vie.
