Hello my Wildlings, I have a challenge for you.

A few days ago I was scrolling facebook, as I spend way too much time doing. I found myself in the reels, and since I’m a craft addict the algorithm decided to feed me crafting videos. Of course, the crafting reels it gave me was for diamond painting. That is a craft that I don’t do (yet) and I almost scrolled past, but I was kind of interested.

It was showing me a tool for diamond painting. The tool was a wheel that let you lay down a long strip of little gems all at once. Looking farther into it, there are all kinds of tools that let you put more than one little gem down at once. Which is all well and good if you want to get it done in a hurry so that you can move on to the next one.

I thought that diamond painting, kind of like adult coloring and cross stitch and paint by numbers, was a craft that you did when you wanted to take some time doing something. To immerse yourself in the craft. I didn’t think it was a “wow, I did that quick, lets do another one!” kind of craft.

I could be way off on that. Like I said, I haven’t tried diamond painting yet. I’ll allow that the different size tips for diamond painting could be like different size brushes for paint by number. Though I usually size down, not up, for that.

But the diamond painting wheel reminded me that the world is so very much about moving as fast as you can at everything you do.

I’m reminded also of an Animal Crossing group I’m a part of.

If you are not familiar with Animal Crossing New Horizons, you play a person who is in charge of taking a deserted island and turning it into a community. You build furniture, decorate the island, and you build your own house from a tent to a multi-room house and decorate it. The game itself is very chill. I’ve been playing since it was released and I still spend a lot of time every day fishing and hunting bugs and digging up fossils and rearranging my furniture. It’s a very cozy game, and the most dangerous things you encounter are wasps, spiders and scorpions, and all they do is send you back to your doorstep if they get you.

In the ACNH group I’m part of people will often restart their game and when they do they are in the group asking for furniture and bells (the game’s currency) and complaining about how long it takes to get enough bells to do things like expand their home and build bridges and inclines and such.

Without donations from other players it could take weeks or months to get it all done the old fashioned way.

But again, I thought that was the whole POINT. The fishing and bug hunts and fossil digging is supposed to take time. It’s supposed to be fun and relaxing. You’re not supposed to terraform and cover every inch of your island in a day.

Too many people approach their hobbies the same way they approach their entire lives. Hurry, hurry, hurry.

I am not excluding myself from this. I often try to do so many things at once that nothing at all gets done.

So I challenge you, my Wildlings, and my challenge is this:

Find a cozy Hobby. I don’t care what, but find something chill, and make time for you to do your chill hobby. And FOCUS on it. Don’t just do it, but enjoy the doing of it. Don’t just rush through doing the thing so that you can do the next thing. If you don’t enjoy the doing of it, try a different hobby on for size. There’s LOTS of hobbies out there.

Tell me, what cozy hobby do you want to slow down and do? If you don’t know what you might want to do, come back and see me again. I plan to have a series on different cozy hobbies to give a try.