When you become a parent for the first time, you notice that many priorities in your lifestyle change. All of a sudden, certain personal priorities tend to fade away as you look after the new most important person in your life. It’s humbling to realize someone else is now a higher priority than you are to yourself, but that’s the essence of parenting.
As time goes on, and you become more adept at this whole magical, strange responsibility (no doubt helped by many of the posts on our website!) you’ll begin to see your child grow in independence. This can be a worrying time for any parent, but ultimately it’s much healthier than keeping them constrained and away from developing properly.
As you get older, and you begin to have more free time, you may begin to think about how to fill it. However, if you’ve been so focused on parenting, on a career, on managing your household affairs and trying to keep up with every single task (rather than hobby) you needed to enjoy, figuring out what to do with this free time can be tough.
A good way to keep sharp between the ears and to feel productive in all you do is to welcome creativity into your life again.
This not only helps you feel productive, but also allows you to nurture a project or discipline you love, which gets to the heart of the parent’s need to care for something beyond themselves. That can be a great substitute to have if your child has newly flown the nest, or if you need some time to figure out who you are again, outside the sole definition of “parent,” – even if, in the final analysis, this is what you’re most proud to be.
With that in mind, let’s consider some worthwhile steps you could take:
- Turn Your Hand To Short Stories
Writing can not only help you flex your creative muscle, but it can help you explore topics, ideas and interesting storylines you enjoy. Don’t worry about letting your nerd flag fly, if you have one. It may be that you’ve been reading Terry Pratchett books as of late, and as such hope to write a fun fantasy world in that style.
Or, perhaps you’re more interested in writing a semi-fictionalized version of your own life, helping you come to terms with certain things or look at situations from a new angle. Writing often seems like a great ordeal and an intensive task to keep up with, but you’d be surprised just how much you can get done in a short amount of time.
With stream-of-consciousness writing, you can simply outline a basic plot that you think is interesting, with a beginning, middle and end, and then edit the draft afterwards. Remember, you can write a basic and simple story within 1,000 words quite easily. This can take about an hour of your time. So don’t feel as though you have to start massively, instead learning how to be concise and to edit language and syntax afterwards will make a huge difference to your skill.
But what matters is having fun. Writing stories and sharing them with your relatives can be a comforting idea. All you need to get started is pen and paper or a device and keyboard.
- Try Photography & Drone Flights
It’s also a great idea to try your hand at photography. Learning to frame landscapes or subjects you find enjoyable showcases exactly how you like to view the world. Photography is also a wonderful excuse to get out into the world and explore it, finding new locations you enjoy, heading on vacation to new countries with different landscapes, or simply spend more time in your local park.
You can also use this hobby to learn more about drone technologies, helping you take wonderful sweeping shots from angles that you couldn’t possibly hope to reach. If your photography or even filmmaking effort advances, you can consider covering events or taking time-lapses, or top-down shots to truly elaborate on your vision.
Not only can this help you see the world anew – but photography is also a great amount of fun.
- Classic Car Restoration Can Be Thoroughly Enjoyable
If you’re looking for something a little more hands-on, it can be fantastic to get involved in craft or technical-based hobbies. For some, that might include working with tools such as DIY, or even crafting furniture.
Another productive and satisfying hobby can involve working on a car over time. This might involve learning how to properly take apart a car, how to implement better changes, and how to become more autonomous with your own vehicles.
This can inspire you to purchase an old husk of a classic car from a vintage you truly do appreciate, and slowly work on it to restore it to its former glory. This does require a good amount of eBay-hopping and the means by which to plan out your restoration in advance, but over time seeing this noble machine take shape can be wonderful. You’re preserving history when you focus on a practice like this, even if it might take you a couple of years to fully work out.
- Reupholster Your Furniture
Reupholstering your furniture is not just a fun hobby that helps you learn more about woodworking and fabric furnishing, but it can also improve your comfort from day to day or even earn you money on the side if you sell your improvements through platforms like eBay.
This might involve sanding down imperfections in the wood, revarnishing and repainting (sometimes with intricate designs), reapplying faux leather, deep cleaning, reattaching replacement textiles and cushioning where appropriate, and more.
The idea is not to completely change the function of each piece but to restore its stability and visual appeal. This way, even a relatively old or vintage piece can be preserved for some time, adding further character to each piece of furnishing and your overall interior design in kind.
- Renovate Your Property
A child flying the nest is the perfect time to renovate your property. That can be a great way of establishing your own taste for the home anew, or perhaps making use of spare rooms that are no longer needed.
For instance, it might be truly exciting for you to put together a home gym that you can work out in and feel excited by, reasserting your approach to self-care in the most convenient way. You may structure a home office to run your side-hustle from, as everyone knows how fun building a computer, putting together a desk environment, and designing your workflow can be, especially for your own purposes.
Renovating your property is equal parts art and science, in that you need a good vision for the final outcome, and all the practical steps to get there (working alongside essential services such as plumbing or electrical outfits), will help you stamp your own sense of presence into the space.
- Enjoy Your Local Arts & Crafts Scene
It’s healthy to enjoy your local arts and crafts scene to the extent it’s available. You may be surprised just how cost-efficient and community-based this can be. From a tea group that comes together and knits every week, to those who enjoy dying textiles, all the way up to pottery groups that help you create the perfect vase you’re looking for but cannot find in local stores, creativity is the name of the game and such hobbyists are delightful to be around.
Taking inspiration in your local arts scene can be a joy, too. You might decide to give patronage to local artists trying to add street art to make your city look more visually appealing, or perhaps even head to galleries or shows in which themes are explored and discussed at length.
A local arts and crafts scene is not only welcoming but can be learned from, with that particular sense of personal relevance hard to find in a more national convention space. Moreover, you’re liable to meet friends here too, as those into arts and crafts are inherently social creatures.
- Learn A New Instrument
If you’ve supported your own child learning their own instruments such as flute, guitar, or drums, odds are you put up with a fair amount of banging or off-tones as they grew and developed. We think you’re entitled to make some noise of your own.
It can be humbling but deeply satisfying to learn a new instrument, especially if you tend to be quite good with your hands. Learning the violin, guitar, or piano can be achieved more cost-effectively than you think, especially with online lessons that seek to provide you with a starting point before you head to an instructor.
Learning new instruments is not only fun but can help you express yourself creatively and feel more confident because of it. In the long run, that’s sure to help you renew your perspective.
With this advice, you’re sure to welcome creativity in your life again. Never think that your parenthood should deprive you of that kind of fun – now you’re a little older and wiser you may be able to start anew.
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