WRITING PROMPT RESPONSE

Let’s Talk About Passion and All Those Things That Bring Us Joy

Hobbies — they come and go

That is what life is truly about. Passion. Love. Excitement. Joy. And all of these words are what create a hobby. A hobby is something we enjoy doing. It brings us joy and excitement. We do it out of love and have passion for it.

Some hobbies only last for a few months or years. Until our interests change, just the way we change over the years. Some hobbies last a lifetime, others get cut off short due to traumatic experiences.

I read a few articles on the “Flint and Steel” writing prompt about hobbies when I stumbled upon Adrienne Beaumont‘s response. It was very personal, authentic and gave me a better insight into her life.

This was when I decided I also had to open up. I had to open up on my past and present. I had many different hobbies over the years and thinking back at them, I’ve stopped most of them because of traveling.

Collecting as a passion

There are different types of hobbies. Some people do different sports as a hobby, some collect certain items, others create artwork. Collecting is one category of a hobby I’ve also followed for years.

But only until I became a Nomad. When you’re traveling a lot, moving your home three times in a year across three different continents, you simply don’t have the space to carry any kind of collection with you.

While I am not actively collecting these items anymore, I still have the collections at my parents' place in my old teenage room.

• Stamps
• Sand
• Shot glasses
• Postcards
• Photographs

“A good life is a collection of happy memories.” — Denis Waitley

Stamps. It’s probably one of the weirdest and most boring hobbies for outsiders. For those who are into it, stamps are interesting and fascinating. I’ve learned a lot over the years about countries, their history, and change in names just because of collecting stamps.

I can’t remember when I started to collect stamps, but I was still rather young. Possibly sometime when I started to write letters to my aunt who lives in the States. While other girls in my age were learning to put makeup on their faces, I learned where on the world map Gabun was located and that Burma and Myanmar are the same countries.

I still don’t know how to put makeup on.

Sand. I know this is really weird. But sometime in my teenage years, I became very fascinated by the different colors sand can have and as I was traveling across Europe visiting various beaches, I began to collect small samples of sand from every beach I went to.

Back home, I put them in small glass jars bought from IKEA, labeled them with the beach and country they were from, and displayed the collection on one of my shelves.

One day, one of my best friends happened to travel to Namibia and brought me as a present a little bit of sand from the red dunes of the Namib. Until then I only had sand from places I’ve been to so I was disappointed knowing I’d never get to this faraway country (back then, I hadn’t been outside Europe).

Well, little did I know I would be living and working in that exact country for several years and collecting the red sand every day in my shoes on my way to work…

Let’s get to the next one. Shot glasses? Yes, this is a more logical thing to collect, especially as one can get this souvenir at every airport or local tourist store.

I would guess also during my teenage years traveling across Europe, I bought a shot glass from every city I visited. I continued this hobby when exploring Africa and added shot glasses from Ghana, Tanzania, Zambia, Namibia, Botswana, and South Africa to my collection.

While this is probably the most useful collection I own, I still drink out of (some of) the shot glasses. They were never just there for decoration, but I always brought them out if I’d have a shot of Schnaps with friends or family.

And while we are on souvenirs, I get to the next point. Postcards. At a very young age, I started to write postcards to family and friends and kept this habit to date. While I surely write less, I still send postcards.

And you know what? When you send postcards, you’ll receive them as well. Not many people do send cards anymore, but if you want to make someone’s day, place a card in between all the invoices in his mailbox.

You’ll receive one in return. I promise.

While I had a passion for traveling from a very young age, I also always bought one postcard for myself. To stick it back home on my boring, wooden shelf (children can have weird likings on furniture, today I love wooden furniture).

And to decorate my also very boring, wooden cupboard, I kept all postcards send to me and glued them onto the wooden doors.

Sometimes I would just sit there and remember who sent me which card from what country. I got some great memories from this collection.

At the moment, this hobby is on hold. I don’t buy any more postcards from places I go to and don’t stick anything back up there.

Because the walls are full.

And I still haven’t settled down. I don’t have my own room in the world. Only temporarily. My teenage room is still mine, but as I said, all the walls are filled.

Last but not least, I get to my passion for photography and the hobby of collecting photographs. While this is the only collection that actually travels with me across the world, this isn’t about any photographs.

These are all instant photographs. While I have countless photo books filled with old pictures of me at my parents' place, I do have a small stack of photographs of friends and family which were all taken with my Instax Mini.

These are the memories I always take with me. It’s a collection that decorates my home wherever I live in the world.

In days of digitalization where everyone takes hundreds of pictures every day but doesn’t look at them ever again, I find this beautiful because those pictures were a capture of a moment. We had no second try because someone had their eyes closed or the light setting wasn’t right. It’s old-school and authentic.

You click and the picture is getting printed.

Activities as a passion

While the first category of hobbies of mine was about collecting items, the second one describes activities I’ve been doing or still do which turned into a passion.

From a young age on I was always active and loved doing all kinds of sports. Except for gymnastics and pretty much anything where you’re supposed to look good while moving, I’ve succeeded in most of them. I’m just not the elegant type of person, but I have no issues with contact sports and ball games.

Here’s a list of activities I’ve turned into passions of mine over the years. Some faded, some disappeared entirely, and others are still growing stronger day by day.

• Jigsaw puzzles
• Playing handball
• Skiing vs. Snowboarding
• Paddleboarding (SUP)
• Writing
• Photography

“Always follow your passion. It brings fulfillment in life.” — idlehearts.com

Let’s start with the most relaxing one at first, which can turn you crazy if you can’t find the right piece. Jigsaw puzzles. I loved doing puzzles as a child and this passion only grew bigger as I became older. Soon I found my love for the 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzles that would take the attention from anything I was supposed to be doing as a teenager.

Doing jigsaw puzzles was a form of meditation for me as a teenager. Whenever I was angry, upset, or just needed some time alone, I would close the door to my room, turn on some relaxing music and sit down in front of that chaos of puzzle pieces.

I had systems in how to find the right piece and nobody was allowed to interfere with it. I do know my mom sometimes would come into my room when I was gone, just to put clothes in the cupboard or whatever. She’d glance at the puzzle and end up staying there until she’d find one piece that fits. But mostly, this was an activity I enjoyed doing alone.

Later in life, I was doing jigsaw puzzles when we visited and stayed over at family friends of ours in Vienna. The husband of my mom’s cousin also loved jigsaw puzzles but wouldn’t touch them anymore. They collected dust in the cellar. Until we came to visit and both of us would sit over the huge puzzles until we finished them late at night.

Once again, as soon as I became a world traveler, I stopped doing jigsaw puzzles because I don’t buy things just to throw them away a few weeks later. And no, I do not travel with boxes of jigsaw puzzles.

But if I come to visit your house and you have a jigsaw puzzle lying around, be sure I’ll sit down there and dive into my passion again.

We’re moving over to sports now and an activity that characterized and shaped my youth like no other. Handball. An active ball game completely unknown in most parts of the world but number two of the most popular sports in my home country of Germany.

I started playing handball when I was 7 and became immediately a goalie. The position I never left. In my teens, I had training sessions 3 to 4 times a week and would often put my handball matches on the weekends over friends’ birthday parties or any other events coming up.

Handball was my life.

I was in a great team. And despite all the fights girls have as teenagers, we were one unit as soon as the game was on. I lived for tournaments and the weekly matches.

I played handball throughout high school and even university. Until I left for a 6 month trip to Africa and never came back. In Namibia, where I ended up living for about five years, nobody even knew what handball was.

Meanwhile, it was part of me for the previous 14 years, which was more than half of my life back then.

But because it didn’t exist down there, I had to accept my handball era was over. I had to get over it, live off my memories, and find a new passion. It was as hard as it sounded. I still miss it and don’t watch handball tournaments often because I get nostalgic for my past.

Another hobby of mine I had since I could start to think is skiing. I just started to walk when my parents put me on a pair of skies for the first time. I visited several skiing classes over the years and eventually was in the hands of my dad.

As a skier, I always hated snowboarders. But when I turned 16 and was once again with my family on the yearly skiing vacation in the same resort since I was three, I got bored from the slopes and the small variety of downhill runs I could do.

I decided to give snowboarding a try to find out why I hate the snowboarders on the slopes so much. And this one turned backward. After a short 3-day course I continued to snowboard, taught myself most of it, and never went back onto the skies. I even became a snowboarding instructor (but never taught on snow, only on sand, more about that later).

Snowboarding was one of the activities I missed the most. Right after playing handball. And I still do. Chasing summer across the globe to be able to work and sky dive all year round makes it pretty much impossible to get in a session of snowboarding.

You can’t have everything in life.

As I was away from the snow for so long, but right next to the ocean it just made sense to pick up a sport on the water. I tried surfing, but the waves in Namibia were just too big and rough for me. I think if I had learned to surf somewhere calmer (and maybe in a warmer ocean) I’d have stuck to it. But I didn’t.

Instead, I found the sport of paddleboarding also known under the name of SUP (stand-up paddleboard). While I still had to go out on the rough and cold Atlantic ocean, I learned pretty quickly how to balance on the board and how not to fall into the cold wet.

I’ve been paddleboarding in Namibia, Germany, and Thailand. In three countries on three continents in waters that couldn’t be more different from each other.

Yet, I loved it everywhere.

Because I love being outdoors. I love being on the water. And I just love doing sports. I’ve seen dolphins, swans, ducks, and lots of fish while standing on my SUP all across the continents.

I bought my own inflatable SUP and actually travel with it across the world. I got sponsored a second SUP because of this article I wrote on paddleboarding and share my joy of being on the water with my husband who got himself an inflatable kayak.

As you can see, I’ve done many sports over the years while I didn’t even mention them all. I’ve done lots of inline skating in my teens and can see myself picking up that hobby again as soon as I’m back in an area with roads in good condition.

I’ve played volleyball in my teens as well. At least whenever I wasn’t playing handball. I became a volleyball coach and trained a mixed youth group.

I’ve been climbing trees, cycling across the fields, climbing indoors and on the rock. I’ve been swimming for years in a club and still swim today whenever I can’t do any of the other sports.

I go on hikes across the world. I hiked in a rain forest in Malaysia, along the coast of Ghana, and often hike in the Alps. I also hiked up the “Matterhorn of Namibia” next to countless other routes.

But there are two more hobbies which are activities unrelated to sports. Writing and photography. My passion for photography developed sometime in my early teens when my parents still had an old analog camera I called a “tractor” because it was so huge and heavy.

Well, and today you won’t see me without my camera for a day. I’m not going deeper into this hobby because you can find articles on it and results of it all across my profile, Instagram, or on Shutterstock where I am selling my photographs.

Writing was something I never had in mind, especially since my German teacher once told me my essay was great “but you will just never become a writer”. Well, if he only knew…

I had written diaries at different times of my life but got really into writing when I left Germany in 2014 to explore the mysteries African continent.

At first, I only wrote in German and only for my family and friends. But my readership quickly grew and people I didn’t know were reading my articles. A few years later I began to write in English as well and to this date publish every single article now in two languages.

I write every day. And everywhere. I write in bed, at work (when I’m waiting to jump), on a hammock, on the beach, in the desert, in the mountains, and on planes.

Writing fulfills me and inspires me at the same time. I’ve published my first book and should be further on the second one, but get lost and distracted somewhere between all these hobbies of mine.

Turning hobbies into a job

While I’ve spoken on collections and activities as hobbies, I’ve also turned some of my hobbies into a job. They say if you love your work, it isn’t work. I wouldn’t fully agree with it, but it sure makes life easier when you love your job.

It makes your life easier and happier.

And this is why I’ve done so many different jobs over the years. Because I keep my passions alive. And as I am shifting the focus on the activities I do as hobbies, I also move jobs from one hobby to the next one.

These are all hobbies I’ve turned into my work over the years. I’ve earned my daily bread with all of them at some point in my life. They’ve been or still are my main income source.

• Sandboarding
• Climbing
• Skydiving
• Writing & photography

While I am missing a lot of security in life because I don’t do contract work or have a 9-to-5 job, I’m having lots of joy and excitement — not only in my free time and during activities done as hobbies — but also at work.

“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” — Confucius

Final words

I do know this was a lengthy article, but I do appreciate every single reader who made it this far, with skim reading, skipping, or soaking in every single word of mine. I appreciate all of you. Because you are the reason why my passion for writing is so alive.

I just wanted to share as much as possible of my life, my past, and my present. For you to understand better why I am the way I am and why my decisions in life might vary a bit from yours.

Keep your passions alive because they are what keep you happy and strong. Even in the tough times.

“Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you.” — Oprah Winfrey

Here are more inspiring writing prompt responses I’ve written over the past few months…

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