What is life without hobbies? I can't even imagine. Hobbies generate passion, zest for life. They also keep our creativity going and feed it into our professional lives. Hobbies create space within ourselves to deal with the aches and pains that sometimes crop up in life. A life without hobbies is a life of have-to's. Sadly, there are a lot of people out there who don't have hobbies, and I've noticed that these people are usually overall unhappy.

Hobbies come in all shapes and forms: arts, sports, collecting, and creating. And many hobbies provide a social outlet, put us in touch with others who share that same interest, people we might no meet otherwise.

Even though I write professionally, I still write as a hobby too. It's always fun to play with words in various formats, and without the pressure of publication. I write journals and keep idea notebooks. These are fun to play in.

Of course, as a writer, one of my big hobbies is reading. I read a lot of non-fiction books on many topics: biology, astronomy, ecology, history, software help books, Buddhism, Wiccan topics, metaphysical, quantum physics, psychology, programming, and others. I suspect I read about 30 non-fiction titles a year. I also read a lot of fiction, mostly fantasy and science-fiction, but occasionally other genres as well. I don't read as much fiction as I'd like to, but I get in six to a dozen novels read a year.

Writing and reading requires a lot of sitting, and so does my job. So, on weekends, I try to get out for hobbies of a more physical nature. I'm a certified scuba diver, and for the first two years after I learned to dive, I was out in Monterey or Carmel waters every weekend. I combined diving with underwater photography. You can learn more about my diving and underwater photography on my Scuba Diving page.

In recent years, I've also been doing a lot of hiking and land photography. Big Basin is one of my favorite hiking places, but there are many others in the Bay Area that I'm just beginning to explore. You can see many of the photos I've taken on these hiking excursion on my Hiking and Photography pages.

To stay in shape for all that hiking and diving, I go to the gym during the week. Many might not consider this a hobby, but if I look at it as a hobby, I'm more likely to do it. I have an MP3 player full of peppy music to listen to while I'm there, and it keeps me going. Music, too, can be considered a hobby. In fact, it seems to be a necessity to many people to get in at least a little music listening each day. Studies have shown, it does much to change our moods and energy levels, so choose your music carefully!

Exploring nature is not just a hobby to me, but a way of life. I've written about this in detail in my upcoming book Life's Lessons from Land and Sea. I'm using my own photography for the cover, and it's a project I'm really enjoying working on, a project that combines my hobbies with my professional life.