Adulting - Let's Talk About... Hobbies

Episode Date: September 14, 2024

 Hello and welcome to Adulting, and the tenth episode of Let’s Talk About… a broadening of Adulting... where that was about all of the things we never got taught in school, this is almost like seminars on life; where my audience (that's you!), get to chat anonymously about things they couldn't necessarily discuss over lunch with their friends, or feel like they don't have anyone to talk to about whatever it may be.  To get involved, follow me on Instagram @oenone, where every Tuesday we vote on a topic and every Wednesday we dig deep. Let’s Talk About… Hobbies. The submission read: Do people actually have hobbies? Seems running is the current fad but how many enjoy? I hope you enjoy :) as always, please do rate, review and subscribe! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

FanDuel Casino's exclusive live dealer studio has your chance at the number one feeling, winning, which beats even the 27th best feeling, saying I do. Who wants this last parachute? I do. Enjoy the number one feeling, winning, in an exciting live dealer studio, exclusively on FanDuel Casino, where winning is undefeated. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario. Gambling problem?

Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Please play responsibly. Hello and welcome to Adulting and the 10th episode of Let's Talk About, a broadening of adulting where that was about all of the things we never got taught in school. This is almost like seminars on life where my audience,'s you get to chat anonymously about things they can't necessarily discuss over lunch with friends or maybe you just feel like you don't have anyone to talk to about whatever it may be to get involved follow me on instagram at anoni where every tuesday we vote on a topic and every Wednesday we dig deep. Let's talk about hobbies.

The submission read, do people actually have hobbies? Seems like running is the current fad, but how many enjoy? Every week you astound me with how many responses we get. Sometimes I really can't be sure if there's going to be much to be said on a topic. Hobbies could feel like it could be quite bland. But there was so much that came out of this. Just a flag that I did go on a long run this morning could feel like it could be quite bland, but there was so much that came out of this. Just a flag that I did go on a long run this morning and I did love it. And I am going to be on the pro running side of this debate and it does get a little heated. And I didn't realize

how contentious running was, even though I did used to be a hater, but I'm now a reformed hater and a lover of running. Apologies to those of you who don't subscribe. Shall we get into it? I'll start off with some of the shorter messages that came in. The first one read, is it a new hobby, running, or are guys for losing weight now that gym muscles aren't trendy? Now we are going to get into this later, but this being the first submission, I had so much to say immediately. So let me go. I do think that that is a correlation between heroin chic, a Zen pick, rise of skinny, noughties fashion, low rise jeans and running. I do think that body trends influence exercise trends and that when Kim Kardashian's Big Bottom was the most desirable thing out there and the trend that was going,

we had glute guides and booty training and a massive rise in people aspiring to get that big bum look. And that has died out a little bit recently. I still think that that exists. I still think that people are interested in being toned and muscly, but I definitely think that to the extent that when I was coming up as a fitness influencer, that has diminished. I definitely think that there's a truth in that. The thing with that is though, that I also do believe that running is such an amazing form of exercise and I really am quite new to the cult I've really struggled to get into running when I was at school I remember every single year we had to do a 10k around the school and I always used to try

and cheat and cut through the middle and then I'd end up like walking the whole thing I write about this in my book as well but I just always found it so humiliating. I think it was really triggering. I think it feels very exposing. And so I do think a lot of women, especially, probably have really complicated feelings around running just because of the way that we were brought up and the way that sport and exercise were always pitched to us as ways to lose weight, which is really sad. And the fact that we've come so far the other way in terms of diet culture and feeling resistant towards having too many aesthetic goals is really good but I think we can't cloud our judgment on the fact that exercise is really important and if you're able-bodied and capable then it really should be something that you're aiming to get into your day for whatever reason

I mean, the reason doesn't really matter as long as it's positive and it's not self-harming or self-punishment. But moving your body is amazing. We're going to get onto this more, but that was my initial reaction. I agree. I think there's some correlation. I do think that people are getting into running because of body trends changing, but I also do think that maybe it's just trends come and go. I actually really wish that those aerobics classes that you see in like old 80s videos, you know, when they have the leotards and like the call on me, I want that to come back. I'd really enjoy wearing leg warmers and tights and a leotard. So maybe we can lobby for that to happen.

The second message I received, which I found quite interesting, and a lot of you had a lot of reactions to as well, was my life motto is that men have hobbies and women have friends. So no, I don't have hobbies. That kind of surprised me because it felt a little bit diminishing. I really wanted to think about it. Someone replied to this saying, oh God, this makes me so sad that some people think like this. It feels like women only exist within relation to other people, i.e. as a mother, a daughter, a friend, but men are allowed and encouraged to be an individual first and foremost with wants, dreams, and hobbies. And I think that's a really valid response to that post. But then the poster actually did reply and said,

sorry, this isn't what I was getting at at all. Women's relationship to other people and our ability for strong friendships is something that should be completely praised and not at all in this whole vacuum of existing to please others. A lot of my boyfriend's friends are simply through hobbies, playing sports, games, etc. Whereas women are great at building deeper connections, asking questions, etc. I think I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek with this originally, but I class myself as not having hobbies. But I enjoy what other people here have mentioned, going to the gym, reading, knitting, etc. It's often that these have been demonized for not being proper hobbies as it's not necessarily niche. Apologies, this was a

tongue-in-cheek comment that was skewed. This gave me a bit of pause for thought again, because I do think it is true. I think that that statement they said is a manifestation of the way that society is set up, especially when we think about heteronormative relationships and people with children. And so often, even like podcasts I listen to with couples the husband will have hobbies I'm now thinking of like Chris and Rosie Ramsey on Shag Married Annoyed he'll go and play like BJJ on the weekends and she'll have the kids and it does seem like men have more agency or their their need for hobbies is taken more seriously and their time to carve out for their hobbies is valued more than women's because women so often are, and also no shade to Rosie and Chris Ramsey, that was just something that popped into my head. But the women's role,

the mental load, the domesticity, just all the little things that we're psychologically burdened with to believe are feminine or the role of the woman mean that we often maybe don't have as much time as men, even thinking about pink tax and the amount of effort and time that women put into their appearances, even the amount of time that it takes us to wash our hair or put on our makeup, all of these little incremental pockets of time that mean us getting certain hobbies in before work or after work or on the weekends, our time is so much more squeezed. That's quite depressing. And I always did used to find it interesting when you'd speak to men

and they would finish work and they would get on a bike and then they'd cycle to the gym and they'd have a shower and they can just be more efficient with their time. It's not to say that women can't, I'm actually a really quick getting readier, not to brag. I can do it quite quickly, but it still does. There is a little element of, you know, I might not have as much time. And if you are in a situation where you have children, often that labor is kind of unfairly weighted towards the woman. So I think what this person is saying is interesting. And I do also think it's true that when men hang out, again, I'm generalizing so much, but sometimes I would speak to a boyfriend or a friend and they'd have seen their friends at football or rugby or whatever their kind of extracurricular activity was. And I would ask them about their friend and their friend's lives. And

they'd be like, oh, we didn't talk about that, which I find so interesting because women, when we sit down, we communicate, we gossip, we, you know, share all of our deepest, darkest secrets and our neuroses and like what we've been crying about and again i'm being so binary right now but i do find that that really interesting that uh men often will bond over activities and women will bond over communion and communication so i i do get what that person was saying, but I also understand why we all initially read it and felt a bit, oh, that feels not right. And another person also replied saying, I've also heard the phrase that men have hobbies and women have obsessions, as if women's interests are something to be internalized and lesser than men's.

And someone replied to this saying, I literally had an ex trivialize my hobbies, saying I didn't have any compared with him because he cycled and gamed meanwhile I'm out here doing pilates photography gaming arts crafts and more a lot of what came up in this conversation was people just not really knowing how to define hobbies or we all seem to have this weird resistance to naming things that we do outside of work as hobbies either because we weren't good enough at them or because we don't do them regularly enough it's definitely something that I also will get that feeling if someone asks you I don't know like on a dating website for instance like what are your hobbies or in an interview or in any kind of situation it does make you panic because there's tons of things I love to do I love to paint I love to knit I love to run I love to go to the gym I watching films, but I often might not carve out enough

time to do those things regularly. So I feel like I can't say those are my hobbies. And I wonder if we, because of, again, this is going to come up so much and it comes up every episode and I've got so many thoughts on this but just social media every single time we do a let's talk about it seems to be this massive inhibiting factor in us being able to access whatever the conversation is about whether it's hobbies whether it's dating whether it's body confidence whatever it might be the amount of time sink that we spend scrolling doom scrolling just absorbed in our phones means that we don't have space for boredom which we've spoken about before so that kind of breeds this inability to go out and seek things to do for fun

and that's really sad and I love reading and I love going to the gym and I love running those are probably the only things that I do frequently enough to class them as a hobby. And when I really think about that, that makes me a bit sad because I absolutely love painting and I love knitting and those things as well. I get kind of hyper fixated on and they're really therapeutic because I completely get out of my mind. And if I'm painting or knitting, I don't know if it's the activity of doing something where you're working with your hands and you get really absorbed in the craft. There must be something to that mind working with your hands and you get really absorbed in the craft there must be something to that mind muscle connection between brain and hand and keep

creating that means you are able to give yourself room to breathe and percolate and whatever it might be unlike when you're scrolling on your phone and just neurons are firing off in your brain 24 7 and you're without knowing just consuming so much information that could be detrimental to your mental health staying on the topic of social media for a minute, a message that I found interesting was it sometimes feels like we want to be seen to be doing things rather than just doing them. And I imagine that this person is also talking again about being seen to be doing things on social media. This is a change that I've really noticed in the last maybe three to four years, because as someone that is a content creator, I have always felt this pressure of having to feel

like anything that I do for pleasure will be great to try and turn that into a form of content in order to sustain my following, in order to potentially get ad revenue. And because that is kind of part of my job and like Gia Tontino writes so expertly in in Trick Mirror the last thing to cannibalize is the self and we're all kind of branding and self-selling and whilst that makes sense in the context of someone who's a content creator I've been really surprised at how many times when we do these let's talk about so many of you submitting who are people who are just users on these platforms and not necessarily content creators are feeling the same level of pressure that I am feeling as someone

who relies on it for my work and I want to understand whether or not it's because everyone is kind of feeling like they are somewhat an Instagrammer, an influencer and whether or not because the lives of influencers have become this inspirational aspirational thing that we're all constantly absorbing all the time not only do we want to buy the clothes that people wear and decorate our homes in the same way and emulate the way that they live their lives that has translated into also feeling that everyone and anyone should be documenting their lives to the extent as someone who is directly profiting from doing that. And that's very interesting because there was definitely

a time when there was a distinct difference between how I felt and how my friends who have traditional jobs or just jobs that aren't on social media felt about these platforms. platforms and that kind of collective exhaustion and also collective feel need to prove themselves or to post online is really interesting and I also wonder if it goes back to a conversation we had maybe last week or a couple of weeks ago about how the one about social media addiction perhaps it is all tied into all of these conversations we're having which is and even last week's actually talking about people not going out as much because we are perhaps not as good at going out and because we are perhaps so addicted to our phones we are relying on not only seeing what our friends are up to by looking on their instagrams, but also performing our lives digitally so that we can

prove to, subconsciously or not, prove to friends, family, whoever it might be, that we're living a really fulfilling life. And that just feels really dystopian that so much of our drives to do whatever it might be is actually in order to just perform a life that we think is valuable and worthy. And one of the topics that keeps being submitted, which I actually really want to talk about as well, is the homogenization of appearance and the way that because of trend lab fashion and algorithms pushing certain things at certain points in time, we all end up looking very similar because we're all fed the same information. And the idea of eccentricity or people that were sort of slightly oddballs or, you know, really had their own way,

it's becoming more and more unusual. And I guess this ties back into the submission at the beginning saying like running seems like a fad. So many of you submitted that you just see running everywhere. I'm aware that I work with Runner who are an incredible app and I this isn't part of my work with them but I do love them anyway I won't talk about that because that might be annoying in the context of this podcast but yeah that was just something that I was thinking about that I thought was interesting another thread in this conversation which is really pertinent uh is about about just the time and the money aspect and the energy aspect of actually being able to do things outside of work. So a message read, It feels hard to have a hobby in an economy that pressures us to monetize things you enjoy under the guise of a side hustle.

I feel guilty spending money on a hobby that's purely for fun, even though I know how important it is for my mental health, well-being and pure enjoyment. And another message read, this topic tags on with last week's topic for me a little. Some people's hobby seems to be socialising. I know a few people and besides work, going out for a drink, work, socialising is their main hobby. But financially, with time constraints, you can see why having hobbies and a job and everything else we're expected to do just doesn't always feel feasible I totally agree that it can feel exhausting and the idea of if you've had a really long day at work I think we're in such a rhythm with it being and I remember getting to this point in a previous relation as well and I kind of felt like oh no this is kind of depressing there's something really gorgeous about sitting with your partner and getting into a tv series absolutely don't knock it especially in the autumnal months and

the winter months it's lovely to be really cozy but when you get into that rhythm of wake up go to work finish work cook dinner sit down watch tv go to bed it is a bit depressing and obviously we've moved on so far from TV being the enemy. It's social media now. There is never a moment really when we're not attached to a screen. I do think that we're losing time basically just from being in so much screen time. Another message read, hobbies don't have to be expensive. I'm actually so perplexed by this conversation. Taking photos of sunrises can literally be a hobby, running is free, trying new recipes. I also don't know why I'm getting so triggered by the question box this

week. Like, come on people, what are you interested in? What makes you happy so you want to keep doing it? What gives you purpose? And another message read, on a similar vein to this point, I grew up in a poor-ish household and didn't get the opportunity to do any clubs, play an instrument, etc. I'm not saying that's the only way to have a hobby, but a lot more of my middle-class friends I met at uni went immediately into sports clubs and other activities, and I just felt like it was too late. I definitely have some of the smaller hobbies now, like reading, baking, gym, but do feel I missed a bit of an opportunity as a kid trying to try things. I do think that that is such an important point. I'll go back to,

let's start with the one about hobbies being free. I think that again, we have to really try to emancipate ourselves from the clutches of capitalism when it comes to hobbies, because someone sent in a message saying that running isn't free because there's so many subscriptions and so many things to have. I went to reply at the time and then I just left it but running is free from the point that you have a pair of trainers I really think that that is the one investment you need to make in running is a good pair of trainers just to project your joints and your ankles and your feet because it can be a really it's a high impact sport and you people do get really injured so that is one investment I think you really should make but a pair of trainers I've my last

pair of trainers for maybe like six years before someone told me that maybe I'd run too much of them and I needed a new pair. So that's one big investment. In this day and age, I do think that most people have gym kit. But again, if you don't, there are ways to get that. I know that that's still an upfront cost. But running fundamentally is free and no one should ever make you feel like again I know advertise an app that's completely up to you it has really enhanced my ability to run and my

confidence and I think it's really worth it but please never feel like you can't access things because you don't have the best the newest the shiniest the most up-to-date app watch whatever you can go for a run without any of that there are so many resources online as well which are free couch to 5k from the nhs which kind of gives you a plan to get into running so there definitely is ways to do activities and i understand and i hate that we feel that we're not good enough because we don't have certain things to do whatever it might be that is really annoying and that level of shame perhaps that people feel is really detrimental and just like yeah an awful aspect of late-stage capitalism so I do think that things can be free however I also do agree with the second point about class I went to a private school and it was the norm for people

to do lots of activities if you come from uh you know a background where your parents had time and the money to take you to after school activities I can completely understand how that would then impact your access to those things later in life if you've never really played sport if you've never really done things of course it's going to feel like there's a big barrier up of course you're going to feel like perhaps you're not welcome that is also a really important thing to consider, I think, when it comes to certain hobbies. FanDuel Casino's exclusive live dealer studio has your chance at the number one feeling, winning. Which beats even the 27th best feeling, saying I do.

Who wants this last parachute? I do. Enjoy the number one feeling, winning, in an exciting live dealer studio, exclusively on FanDuel Casino, where winning is undefeated. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario.

Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Please play responsibly. Please. A really uplifting and sweet message from someone read, someone in my village set up a women's only rounders group on a Monday evening for free. It's been the highlight of my summer. Just a lovely group of women attempting to play rounders,

cheering everyone on regardless of teams, always forgetting to keep score, making Mondays positive. I love rounders. It's one of the only sports at school that didn't bring me out in the heebie-jeebies that I actually really enjoyed. I just love it. I think it's so fun. And I think that's a really good way of remembering as well. I think we live in such a weird world where we forget that we have some agency to just go and do things. And everyone's like, oh, I need to book a tennis court. I need to do this. There's something quite fun as well. I just

about having like a beach ball and just doing like a volley in the park I've never really thought to do that I actually really want to start football it's something that's on my list to do I played girls football in year seven granted I wasn't the worst team but I love one of my favorite things in life is when I'm in the park and a child kicks that ball towards me and I kick it back and I don't know one in every 50 kicks I'm like damn I'm pretty good and that makes me want to play football I just think it's a fun sport I would like to join and again like you don't actually have to sign up to a club to do these things you can just kind of get your friends together or try and make a group and just go and kick a ball around or get a rounder set

I really want to play rounders now I'm very jealous of that I think that's really sweet and another message which I thought was really interesting as well, said, when you grow up in the UK, at least, the media school, your parents make you focus on the things that will make you successful in your career, etc. That means that anything that doesn't drive towards that, you deprioritize or feel like you have to be good at it to feel successful versus simply just doing it for enjoyment. We have a skewed version of success in this country which is geared towards earning a decent salary and building a career versus success equating to happiness and the things that bring you happiness social media has exacerbated that every hobby or pleasure pastime another piece of content to be shared or judged i used to paint

all day every saturday as a kid and stopped i'm again. And the only criteria I have for it is that I enjoy it because I love the feeling of creating. I think as well that I do have it with running. It's why I never really share my times. I don't run fast, but also to someone else I might, so I don't want to share that. I do feel a bit like when people share their paces all the time, I can find it a bit overwhelming because for me, my success with running and the barometer for my success is just doing it. So I ran 8K today and the fact that I can go and run an 8K and that I can get to the end of it and I don't necessarily have to stop is mind boggling to me. There was a time when that just would have been inconceivable and the fact that I can go out and do that every week, that's my barometer for success. It doesn't matter how long it takes me. It doesn't matter if I do stop. The fact I went and did it, I can go out and do that every week that's my barometer for success it doesn't matter how long it takes me it doesn't matter if I do stop the fact I went and did it I'm like pat

on the back well done and I enjoy it I actually do really enjoy it I think changing your parameters around what means something is successful is important in every area of life and I'm I'm actually writing a sub stack about this but I often have to do it when I feel like I'm failing in a certain area then I'm just like okay let's completely strip this back in order to feel successful this week all you've got to do is get through your to-do list do these things look after yourself you know rather than thinking about what is the outcome of the activity just doing whatever it might be taking another day as it comes and making it through. And I really agree that even when you're writing your ACAS forms and you're trained in that moment to think that every single thing that I do

could be a means to sell myself, to promote myself, to be better in the eyes of someone else, rather than just adding joy or pleasure into your own life. I thought that message was great. Another message read, I feel like sometimes, not for everyone and not all hobbies, of course, this is again, another thing that's brought to us as an incentive to be productive that stems directly from capitalism. I'm saying that for people, I've been there that are desperate to have hobbies, like it's fine to just scroll your phone, watch a series that you love and spend time with your family and friends. I mean, unless you want to get in touch with your creative side or have always wanted to get into something specific, it's also fine to

not have any original hobbies in your life. Am I too cynical about this lol? I don't think you're too cynical at all. I definitely think there is an element of hyper productivity and I've spoken about it before. I get a real ick from those books from men who wake up at five in the morning and have like 65 different hobbies and that ultra productivity that constantly creating and constantly plugging in and constantly finding new ways to make money is is actually I think the exact opposite of a hobby I think those things are mutually exclusive productivity is not a hobby I think the exact point of a hobby is something, an activity, whether it's physical activity or creative or social, that allows you to be in and of yourself without being concerned about how that is going to improve you as a person. And by virtue of doing it, it does improve you

as a person. Is that a load of word salad? A hobby, I think, literally means it's that thing that takes you outside of the structures of society that frame you as being more worthy. And I think that this post was right, that we have re-narrativized hobbies in some ways to be something to add to our roster something to signify who we are what what status we have our ability I think that the promoting of our extracurricular things does mean that again that strips away the joy and I found this as well whenever I've had something that I've enjoyed doing and an agent will be like, oh, I didn't know you liked doing this. You should talk about that. You should write about that. You should film yourself doing it.

And it brings me out in hives because suddenly all the pleasure that I was getting from doing that thing, from being in my mind, that little phone there filming me just completely derails the whole concept of it. And so it's not to say that your hobbies have to be in private or that you can't broadcast them. But I do think there has to be kind of an intrinsic innate desire to seek and find pleasure within that activity that is purely for you and that is purely for your own mental well-being and for your joy rather than to impress someone else or to feel like you're more worthy and so of course if you don't find joy in any of the like the various things we've spoken about then yes it's absolutely fine for your for your hobbies

to be things that perhaps we aren't viewing as hobbies that again felt like a load of word salad sorry I want to go back to talking about physical activity and exercise as a hobby because we were talking about kind of hobbies generally, and then also this thread really popped up. And I think we're living in a really interesting moment. We're dealing with a hangover of very amazing activism from fat positivity activists and body positivity activists who really, really changed the narrative when it came to how women view themselves and their food that they eat and the way that we move our bodies and just how we are simply not just vessels for male pleasure that need to be starved and exercised and preened and kept looking as virginal and young and pure and skinny and submissive as possible, which is where so much

of diet culture comes from. And so much of this idea around women needing to be as small as possible. There's so much history around where that comes from. And so I think we came so far forward in understanding that bodies fluctuate, that bodies at every single size can be healthy, that you cannot dictate someone's health simply by looking at them, that someone who is extremely skinny could be much more unhealthy than someone who lives in a larger body and all of that was fabulous and it it helped me no end and I really have come so much further in terms of accepting my body and feeling comfortable in my skin and whether it's cellulite or stretch marks or rolls or bloating or just bits of flab that you find you know by your armpit, whatever it might be. We've come really far in being better at body acceptance. But somewhere along the line,

we once again, instead of managing to realize that exercise has all of these benefits outside of weight loss, we are still stuck on that thing that I was taught at such a young age, which was exercise was a punishment for eating too much. And exercise is hard, which it is. And instead of me realizing that part of the joy and the fun of exercise being hard is the challenge of getting through it, it's the ragged breathing and the blood pumping through your body and the endorphins and the full physiological process of exercise and the joy that that can create, we're still framing it as exercise and weight loss being in a direct correlation. In fact, the only purpose of using it to the point where we've come so far the other way that we're demonizing exercise because we're saying that exercise is only used to punish women

and to make them smaller. And a message read, Pilates, high rocks, running weights, et cetera. I feel like there's an ulterior motive. And lots of you reacted to this because I think the message was saying the ulterior motive is weight loss or to look a certain way. I think that it's important and I think that we're at a place now where we can accept that it is okay if you want to change the way that your body looks. We have agency. We're alive for a long time. So much, there is so much to be said for body acceptance, but I think we should also all allow each other the ability and to not now shame it the other way where if someone goes, do you know what? I want to get a bit fitter. I want to feel a bit leaner. It's going to really improve my mood and my sex life and my attitude and my outlook.

I think that there is a really perfect little place somewhere in the Venn diagram of, you know, extreme dieting and over-exercising and living quite an unhealthy life perhaps where we're not at all moving our bodies and we maybe are eating too much. In the middle, there's a little place I think where it's okay, where you can do a little rejig of your food intake and your activity level and it can be healthy and positive. And with all of the knowledge that we have, we can go, do you know what? Maybe I'm going to move my body a little bit more. I'm going to eat a bit more green veg and I'm going to drink a bit less, whatever it might be.

I think that we, because whichever way we're cutting it, we're still just shaming women for their bodies, for wanting them to be smaller, for wanting to accept them. There has to come a point now where we reach this end point of those two extremes and go do you know what we have we're armed with so much more knowledge now and even if someone is going to pilates and going to running and doing whatever because they might want to change their body a bit that is still okay as long as it's not verging into disordered eating or self-hatred or self-punishment because I cannot explain to you how much exercise helps me. I'll just go from my anecdotal evidence, but I am someone that can get depressed and I

didn't really realize that that's what these periods I would go through until I was diagnosed with depression. Was it last year, two years ago? I can't remember. And I went on antidepressants and I had you know maybe a six-month period of being in a really dark place and then I got much better and since understanding that that's what was going on in my brain I now can feel myself getting towards a period of low mood or feeling down and sometimes it's unstoppable and sometimes I just have to succumb to it and other times I am actually able to kind of nip it in the bud at the point where it's approaching me and make certain lifestyle changes, whether

that's stopping drinking, getting more sleep, making sure to not ignore my friends or even telling my friends, guys, I think I'm feeling a bit depressed just so that they're conscious of the fact that I might drop off the face of the earth. And exercise always. And I know this isn't the same for everyone and that mental health is not as simple as drink a green juice and go on a walk. It is so much more difficult than that. But when it's low mood or when it's a more manageable mental health blip, exercise is almost always the thing that makes me feel better, that gives me energy, that brings me to life. Because I think so much of our world is sedentary, is looking at other people, is being consumed with our own failures

or our own inadequacies or the fact that we haven't found that person that we love or we haven't got the job that we want or we perhaps haven't had a baby or whatever those things are that you focus on that are your goals, a baby or whatever those things are that you focus on that are your goals that the things that you are hoping for and dreaming for and waiting for we spend so much time in our head thinking about the past you know like feeling so anxious about things we've done or things we've said or things we should have done or should have said and then so anxious about the future and so much of our ability to be in the present is stripped away from us because of all of these things that we have going on.

Something about exercise, because of the way that you're focused on the movement, because you're so in tune with your body. I think so often we're not even really in or of our bodies. We are so, you know, we're absorbed on our phones, we're in the digital world, we're doing whatever it might be. Exercise just pulls you into the moment. And with running, especially, you know, your breathing, it's something about being outside in nature. We're not outside enough. We live in a rainy grey country that, you know, maybe it doesn't promote being outside. Being outside, breathing with weights. Again, I just like the simplicity. I've just got to pick this up

and put this down 10 times then I'm going to rest for 60 seconds it's it's a real honoring thing to your body I think to move it and to allow yourself to sweat and to become to become completely uninhibited and the other times when we do this I think like I find for me dancing in a club, like really sweaty. God, that brings me so much joy. And exercising. God, I feel like I've wanged on about this enough. But I'll read another message from someone else that said, as someone who works full time in the fitness industry, amen to this. I think there's a balance here. I agree people get involved due to trends, but ultimately moving your body is good for you. The modality doesn't matter the motive 100 does i find a lot of modalities for women are triggering and so far as we

automatically assume they equal weight or fat loss my focus as a personal trainer is to encourage women to look at performance over aesthetic which as you said helps with your body image and self-esteem and i talk about this with my friends sometimes but maybe i've been really busy with work. Maybe I haven't carved out time to exercise. I really always try to prioritize it, but sometimes I will forget and I will start to feel a bit low. And then I'll go to the gym and be like, oh, I actually feel great. Oh, I haven't been exercising. It's as simple as like doing, even if you're not doing anything crazy. So a lot of the time I go to the gym and I just do biceps.

I walk to the gym. I do bicep stuff and tricep stuff and maybe a couple of press-ups until I get a little vein in my bicep. 20 minutes, that's it. It's just, it's even the active, the act of going to exercise, moving your body, of giving yourself that self-care can be really amazing. Another message read, it's so, so important to our physical and mental health. My work involves investing in the sport and physical activity industry to increase the population's activity levels, particularly targeting women and girls and lower socioeconomic areas. It doesn't have to be traditional sports, but just a little movement daily, even better if it's outside. Finding something you enjoy is so important and most certainly can be called a hobby. And another message, I played a sport

competitively at very high level where almost all the women involved gained a significant amount of weight both in muscle and fat involved to support healthy athletic muscle gain. My teammates and I loved the sport and still do. I lost weight when I stopped competing at a high level but I'd give anything to be able to go back to that level of power and fitness, knowing full well doing it right causes weight gain. I wanted to finish on this message. Similar to the summer discussion a few weeks ago, I think hobbies have seasons too. Sometimes they'll fill you up, other times you'll be busier with life or have less energy. It ebbs and flows and that's okay. When I took on a more senior job, I was also doing a lot of Netflix and playing easy games like Animal Crossing on my Switch, lol. I just didn't feel like I had the capacity to pull up

my paints or sit at the piano. This year, I feel like I have more space for hobbies and play, which has been glorious. I think this whole conversation has made me realize that we are being way too self-conscious and way too worried about what other people are going to think about our hobbies. The thing that kept coming up was, oh, I don't know what to say when someone asked me but if you ask like a three-year-old or a five-year-old or seven-year-old what's your hobby maybe one week they'll be like playing with dinosaurs and the next week they'll say painting or they'll say running around or playing dress up and I wonder if we feel this idea that like oh god I can't say my hobby is running because I've only been doing it for a week or I can't say my hobby is painting because I haven't done it since last year

and actually all of these things can be concurrent or you can have a fallow period where you're not doing any of them but I do think that doing stuff just for the sake of doing it just for the sake of creating for the sake of play for the sake of rest and self-exploration and self-care. It doesn't matter whether or not you do it every week, whether or not you're good at it, whether or not you decide to give it up. I just think that we should bring back play into our lives. I think when we think about childhood, so much of the joy of childhood is simply that uninhibited ability to be able to reach inside of yourself and know what you desire. Even though children don't have the same language to express themselves, they will often understand their wants

and intuitively be able to decide, I feel like doing this now and I feel like doing that now. I think the paralysis of choice, I think the noise of social media, I think comparison is the thief of joy, all of those things bundled together to make us feel like we aren't good enough to play. And I think we should be playing all the time. And it doesn't matter if that play looks different every week. It doesn't matter if you don't have time to do it all the time. This conversation has really inspired me to, do you know what, I am just going to do a little painting or do something. Or even if you're doing it with the TV on in the background, someone sent a lovely message saying they had a friend coming around to do a big jigsaw puzzle with them. It really doesn't matter what it is, but I really

do believe that it is that thing. It should be the opposite of productivity. It should be play. That's where I'm going to finish it. Again, I had so many more messages, which I haven't read. And I hope I did this topic justice because so many of you had so much to say. And I know that we kind of flitted between talking about running and the concept of exercise as a thing and then also hobbies in general. But I actually, I really enjoyed this conversation and I hope that you enjoyed it too. As always, please do rate, review and subscribe. And I will see you right here next week.

Bye. do rate review and subscribe and i will see you right here next week bye fanduel casinos exclusive live dealer studio has your chance at the number one feeling winning which beats even the 27th best feeling saying i do who wants this last parachute i do enjoy the number one feeling, winning, in an exciting live dealer studio, exclusively on FanDuel Casino, where winning is undefeated. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario. Gambling problem?

Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Please play responsibly.