Getting Back to a Hobby You Loved

The first seven days

• Day 1List every hobby you can remember loving, from childhood on, without deciding anything yet.
• Day 2Open the closet or garage where your old hobby gear lives and simply look at what is still there.
• Day 3Set a kitchen timer for ten minutes and spend them with your old hobby, then stop when it rings, even mid-sentence.
• Day 4Text one friend that you are picking your old hobby back up, and name the first small thing you plan to do.
• Day 5Pick one pocket of ten minutes in your calendar and write your hobby into it like any other appointment.
• Day 6Jot down three pastimes that once made a whole afternoon disappear.
• Day 7Pull one piece of your old gear out into the light and set it on the kitchen table.

Further into the year

The to-dos keep changing as the year goes on. A few from later in this theme:

• Day 30Start a small notebook for your hobby and jot one sentence about what you did today, with no grades or ratings.
• Day 60Take your sketchbook or camera outside on a warm evening and capture something in the summer light.
• Day 120Put on music that fits your hobby's mood while you work on it this evening.
• Day 240Keep a "just for fun" page or scrap where you make things nobody else will ever see.
• Day 365End today's session by naming one small thing you liked about the process itself.

How a challenge works

A Theraglee challenge is a theme with one small to-do for every day of a year. You choose how long yours runs, anywhere from a week to the full year, and each day you get the next to-do: something that takes a few minutes and fits inside an ordinary day. Tick it off when it is done. Nothing is scored and nothing is lost if you miss a day; the next to-do is simply waiting when you come back.

Challenges come with a free Theraglee account, which never asks for a card. Your progress stays private to you.

Challenges like this one

Reading that goes with it