A new way of Bringing Up Issues

Partner has sent me a passive-aggressive Valentine's card.

Strangely enough, the other day I was thinking, I wonder if actually I have too many hobbies and whether I should cull them, in order not only to have more time to be spending staring into space, but also so I could do a few things well rather than a lot of things indifferently. Then today Partner presented me with the following.

That's how I feel when they say 'and now we come into wheel pose', bugger off with your wheel pose

With this message inside.

Cheek

Obviously, the best way to point out someone's character flaw is to do it through the medium of a cutesy kitten, and I think we can all take our respective hats off to Partner for that one. Despite that, however, as I had been thinking, I have made the following list:

Hobbies I do reasonably actively (i.e. at least once a fortnight or so):

• Sewing
• Quilting
• Knitting
• Crocheting
• Yoga
• Pole
• Theatre
• Cooking/ baking cakes

Hobbies that I have not been doing quite as actively and wish to do more often:

• Guitar
• Oil painting
• Sketching of nudes
• Active Blogging
• Burlesque
• Tie Dyeing!!!!!
• Soapmaking
• Developing my tarot reading

Things I wish to try although may not take up:

• Dance
• Swimming (have got a costume but am concerned re side coverage)
• Pottery
• Screenprinting

Things I feel I ought to do but actually do not want to:

• Bloody Gardening
• Reading, apart from books on wicca/ yoga, while on train, or popular 'erotica' when I find myself miserably ensconced in a long ridiculous court case
• Watching Improving Films

What should I Bin From Life? (also why isn't my bin purple, why are these people special hey hey hey?)

You see, in a way, that is quite a lot, and I am beginning to wonder if, for the next stage of my exciting ongoing midlife crisis, it would be an interesting experiment to cull. To make things more manageable, I have been telling myself that a lot of my hobbies are just sub-branches of the same thing - e.g. theatre is very like burlesque, yoga is essentially the same as pole, etc etc, and, if I am creative enough, I can basically reduce the above list to three things:

• Things where I poke a bit of string about
• Things where you spend some of the time leaning quite a long way backwards
• Things involving being in the kitchen and stirring things,

But I do wonder if that is just sophistry and whether, if I concentrated my efforts more, I could, ooh I don't know, have a one-woman burlesque show touring the Fens by this time next year or have quilted something large enough to cover the house. I am going to think. I am doing a fan-dancing workshop on Sunday, and I am going to think quite carefully after that. Because when one has recovered from one's crisis, one may wish to focus. Or one may not. This will take thought. In the meantime I crochet away doggedly on my blanket, three rows to go.

Do you ever feel you do too many things? Or more, if you did fewer things you could get even more out of the ones you were concentrating on?