The importance of other interests

Every once in a while, I need to look beyond the “hobbies I’ve made into businesses”.  This past weekend gave me mulitple opportunities to do this.  We’ll call it a long weekend, as things really began on Thursday.

Thursday was kind of a transition into exploring beyond my boundaries – sort of.  I don’t often go out on a weeknight.  I don’t often go see live bands anymore. Heading out to see Delhi 2 Dublin was really an exploration – honest.
Delhi 2 Dublin gettin' ready to rock

The fact that we are using a D2B song for my Bellywood with Halyma class routine this session, and will tweak it for Bollywood For Fun 2012 usage, is besides the point.

We went out for sushi first to make it more of an adventure and had a blast! Seeing Bellywood students of mine there and attending with some of my BFF troupe mates is again, besides the point.

Friday is date night, for the most part, so it was a quiet evening at home with the hubby – resting up for the next two days of fun.  no photos – 🙂

Saturday took me back to exploring my celtic roots.  Attending the Ottawa Storytellers encore of the Kymera’s Voice production:  The Warrior Queen: Chasing Boudicca was an intimate evening of seeing old friends { who just happen to be previous belly dance students}, hanging with present friends { who just happen to be my BFF troupe mates}, and meeting some new folks who have great stories of their own!  I loved the idea of just sitting and listening to these creative folk tell this wonderful story, and I hope to make time in my busy life to do this sort of thing again!

And then came Sunday. Final day of one friend’s 3 day birthday weekend, so it started with brunch as usual but with added folk at all ends of the table!  SO Happy Birthday Erika!

And then the next adventure began.

Theruvial Milltall drawn by me.

Once again, with familiar and new faces surrounding me, practically hand-holding me through this afternoon of ethereal adventuring, I embarked on my first AD&D, 2nd ed gaming session in the guise of Theurvial MillTall, the halfling Cleric, created for me by my good buddy, Andrea, who along with her hubby Rob, our DM, were hosting this afternoon of chocolate eating fun!

OMG I have never seen that much Halloween candy consumed over an afternoon! We fortunately also had an amazing selection of healthy veggies, and a fabulous supper, so yay for yummy food, laughter and good energy galore and making my brain hurt from thinking so hard!  With one side of the table being totally noobs and the other folks being totally patient, it was a blast. Thanks for your patience folks!

One major victim was our friend’s table – that was uber unfortunate and hopefully won’t be too hard for them to get repaired. Rule # 1: Never have two people lean on the table at the same time. But it was taken in stride, dealt with quickly and the game resumed with careful gusto!

All in all, having great company along the way, I really enjoyed developing some new interests and hope that I can make the time to enjoy them more in the future.  I just have to make sure these new hobbies don’t find a way to become new businesses!

I guess I should touch on why I find it important to have other interests, but you folks are all pretty smart right?  So you get it already!  And this is really just a reminder to me to make sure I stop working all the time, and being such a strong creature of habit!  You can choose to pay attention to that advice too, or not, as to whatever works best for you!

T/H