Day 19: Work on a Hobby You Love #30DaysofGOOD

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Welcome to The GOOD 30-Day Challenge (#30DaysofGOOD). Each month, we challenge our community members to do something that will improve the world around us—and our own lives. The challenge for October? To get healthy. In an effort to help us all rise to the occasion, we're going to assign one small task every day. Each morning, we will post the challenge on GOOD.is and Twitter, along with a testimonial from someone on the GOOD team who's already completed it. We invite you to complete all 30 mini-challenges with us! Today, we challenge you to:

Work on a hobby you love.

I love doing journalism, but I’m not sure that an activity I get paid for constitutes a “hobby,” even when I’m performing it in much of my “free” time. After working, sleeping, and socializing, I don’t have a lot of hours left for hobbying, but I’ve recently been making some preparations, with the end goal of creating my own wall decorations. Even spending 15 minutes on it every day has helped to relax me and break up an interminable work week.

In my spare time, I’ve been betting on eBay for lots of vintage sewing patterns, picking up stray pieces of wrapping paper at thrift shops, painting some canvases I’ve had laying around while talking on the phone, and assembling a few old maps that I’m unlikely to be using for navigation purposes in the near future. I’m not sure where all of this is going, but I feel like it’s trending strongly in the “hobby” direction. Next time some serious hobbying time opens up, I’ll be ready.

-Amanda Hess

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Ready, set, go! Good luck completing today's challenge. Share your experience on Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook by using the hashtag #30DaysofGOOD, or let us know how it went in the comments section below.

Tomorrow's challenge: Avoid using or consuming chemicals.