Don't Let Them Tell You to Lose Yourself

Lately, and after my first #TR30Day challenge, I’ve been struggling to find which hobbies I want to start and/or get back into. I’ve seen a trend of Facebook, Twitter and even Google + posts about people around my age trying to figure out what to do with their spare time now that their school days are either suspended or behind them. It seems crazy that school took up THAT much time, as I had a lot of these hobbies through high school, which was an 8-3 day and consisted of homework too. I understand that once you move out of the parents’ shelter, that a lot of time is devoted to working on top of “school” time to support yourself. 

I just think it’s crazy that through undergrad, I maintained a lot of my hobbies, even though I had a lot of school related responsibilities and had to maintain a certain GPA for a specific number of hours to keep my scholarship. Once I got to graduate school, all of that changed. I attempted to maintain the hobbies (mostly just dance) that were really a part of my identity. I did let other things like painting fall to the wayside as I didn’t have time to contemplate things other than school. I’ve been thinking a lot lately as to why I let myself do that and honestly was pretty miserable for a while once I had to stop dance altogether.

Then I came to the realization that I WAS TOLD TO DO THAT. My professors and mentors TOLD me that I would have to give up everything in order to be successful in that program. Now I’m here to tell you, that I definitely did not have to do that. It also struck me as rather hypocritical as you are supposed to present a “well rounded” person in order to even be admitted to a lot of these higher learning programs. So you want me to be well rounded and then give up everything once I get in? That just seems counterproductive. 

Then I got to thinking that people are under the impression that you can find the “one thing you are good at” or your “niche.” I think we have it in our minds that we can only pursue one avenue in life (which can be partially true) and to give up everything else that doesn’t have to do with that goal. I currently am a consultant, dancer, cheerleader, painter,  and reader. When I was in school, I was told to just focus on being a future consultant and that everything else was “childish.” I’m to the point now, that I don’t care if it’s childish; it makes me happy. I did many awesome things through dance and cheer that I actually use at my job now (BHI Dance team shout out). 

The point of this discussion is that I feel that every person deserves to do what they like to do in addition to doing what is practical to survive. What I mean by that is in order to “survive” one must do something that results in payment to support yourself. But that shouldn’t mean that the only thing you can do is work for payment. I feel as if I have been asleep for the past 3 years that I’ve been in school. Even though I was successful and am graduating in August, I just don’t have a good overall feeling about it. Now that I do things that I like to do, I feel very much awake and much happier. So on that note, I challenge all of you to do something outside of work that you used to do or always wanted to try.