The No Excuses Project: Making time for treasure hunting

Hobbies are important – basically having something in your life that you judge by how much you enjoy doing it and not where it takes you. But for those of us with pressing goals they can be the first thing that goes by the wayside.  The excuses just help it stay there because most everyone still wants to see improvement in themselves – play a better round of golf, knit a more complicated pattern or hunt down an even rarer stamp.

My hobby is treasure hunting- metal detecting and gem hunting in the wild (as in still in the ground)  I’m not very good at it (an excuse to avoid practicing) but I have a blast because the potential is always there – despite the lack of Spanish galleons or pirates in my part of the world.  Treasure hunting falls into that limitless category of things I mean to get to – but the fact that the metal detector is still on it’s original set of AA batteries  doesn’t make me happy.

You might not think there would be that many excuses for something that’s not attached to a major goal. I still managed to find a few that I’ve used to avoid pursuing this hobby:

• I’m too tired (maybe I’d better save it for a day when I feel great and have nothing better to do)
• Doing this will stop me from  doing more important things
• The timing isn’t right (the tide is high, it’s raining, etc.)
• I’ll lose interest before it’s profitable (it could be years before I graduate from pennies and coat buttons)
• I don’t have any experience (I don’t know the secret places to hunt)
• It will take a long time (it’s usually at least a full day commitment)

Next week: how I plan to create some balance in my life and fit in some treasure hunting.

Holding myself accountable

A quick look at how things are going so far:

Gardening – the new schedule seems to be working; got the dahlias planted and started to clear the vegetable garden

Romance – working on owning my previous choices as having been the right ones for me at the time – nothing to apologize for, even to myself.

Photography – doing much better at just having some fun and trying new things and most importantly taking more pictures

Exercise – getting more in; but still need to do better.

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