Well, I can't seem to create a title for this post. Oh well.

It's my birthday. I am glad, yes, but I also usually struggle with a large amount of melancholy on my birthday. It feels like a whole year went by and I missed opportunities to spend time with my grandparents, with others I love but keep in poor touch with. I feel older and unable to turn back and remedy past reasons for regret. Just how I've always been.

I met some great people (some of my husband's cousins) yesterday and in trying to get to know me, they asked what things I like to do, hobbies, etc. I couldn't think of anything. I said I like to read, I am working on my marriage and my relationship with God, and I mostly enjoy my job. I wish I could have had something interested to say. How was I really spending my time?

It was afterwards in the car that I realized: one big "hobby" right now is my health. I think about it constantly, monitoring my Crohn's, my emotional health, my food intake, my weight, the impact all this is having on my marriage, etc. It's all-consuming.

Do I really want my life to be that way? It sounds so empty, so short-sighted. So uninteresting.

Do I have a choice? A chronic illness sort of takes over one's life. A certain amount of monitoring becomes necessary simply to survive. And if we're working toward goals of finding out if we can have children biologically (at least, if my Crohn's can calm down enough for us to try), then having my health be my hobby is a very concrete goal that could expand into a vocational goal: that of being a mother.

So, I will continue on in this new year of my life with health as my hobby, working toward my concrete goal, but with a conscious effort to look around and not get caught up in the minutae of this hobby, kind of like a video gamer can get with his/her hobby.