MARTYHAUGHT

Anyone who has followed my sparse blog will realize that I go for fairly long times without a post. This usually happens when I get focused on some new thing and don’t really think to blog about it while in process. The recipe writing was a classic. I posted at the beginning and end of that project. Of course, it was broken by two major trips for my family, a visit to Juliana’s mother in Florida for the better part of a week and an extended camping trip to the Wild Basin area of the Rocky Mountain National Park around July 4th. This leads me to my primary thought for this post.

I have too many hobbies. Or at least it seems like that to me as I try to juggle my time. First, I have several priorities that simply have to be tended to such as family, work, home and the Boulder Ruby group. Having just moved, our home has dominated our time between unpacking, landscaping our backyard (HOA requirements) and getting settled in. Boulder Ruby is a constant presence that I can’t ignore. At least I have some help and a good core group of members that step up constantly to keep the meetings interesting.

Now on to my hobbies. One of the promises I made to myself was to spend more time doing the things I loved now that I live in Colorado. This includes hiking, camping and skiing. This summer I have been working on fly fishing. Fly fishing, for those that don’t know, is actually a lot harder than it seems (or at least that’s been my experience). Not only is there so many things to learn about it, there is the mere doing of it that no amount of books can help you with. I have to say that I feel like a complete newb with it though on my recently camping trip to the mountains had a small amount of success while on the water. While I didn’t land any fish, I did hook one and had a brief fight with it before it snapped my tippet off (taking my fly with it).

The other thing I did recently was I ran in the Bolder Boulder 10k race back on Memorial day. Due to our move I didn’t quite get as much training in as I wished but I did better than I anticipated. I ran it in 54:30 (8:46 per mile pace) which is pretty good considering it was my first 10k race ever. I also didn’t feel as winded during the race as I thought I might. Looking back I could have pushed myself harder. It will be interesting to see how I do next year, especially if I train more to do the race faster.

So I mentioned too many hobbies. Well, I haven’t had any time for cycling. I used to ride more, doing several BAKs (Bike Across Kansas) as well as other shorter races. Not that I was ever a competitive racer, I just did it for my enjoyment. However my Cannondale has been sitting in my garage gathering dust. I really should get out on it more.

There is one other significant hobby that I need to turn my attention to, woodworking. One of the aspects of our new home was to have space in the garage for a small woodshop. In the past I’ve done a few woodworking projects including a toddler bed for my daughter that I made in 2001. It turned out great and I truly love working with wood. I’ve accepted that between all the things that need to happen this summer I won’t have time to put the shop together until September.

Older hobbies of mine such as music and gaming have been on hibernation. Being a musician is loads of fun but it does take a pretty serious time commitment. Gaming is a different beast falling more in the ‘addiction’ category and doesn’t quite yield the same benefits as my other hobbies. There is a certain level of creative expression that can occur in gaming that I don’t get in other hobbies.

Anyway, I felt like sharing about my hobbies and my desire to do them all. Do I have too many hobbies? Probably. Luckily I have a pretty good sense of priorities and the extra hobbies slide instead of having my family or career suffer. That wasn’t always the case when I was younger. However, I love my life with all my ‘issues’ that I have to deal with. It could be much worse.

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