Traveling! Does that count as a side hobby? By definition, a hobby is an activity done regularly in one’s leisure time for pleasure. I may not travel every weekend or even every month (unless you count driving down to LA), but I do think I travel pretty consistently throughout the year. And I definitely travel for pleasure. So far this year, I’ve gone to Florida, Washington, Colorado, Portugal, Spain, and Nevada. Later this year, I will be going to Cancun, New York, and New Jersey. A lot of these trips are taken when we get three-day weekends or when we get company vacation breaks. Here are a few pictures of some of the places that I’ve been to this year so far…

Everyone wants to spend their free time by doing stuffs that will please them. I get happy and feel relaxed when I create something new like a new sketch/paint or crafts like quilling. I love gifting my close friends and family with handmade gifts. I feel the time and effort we put in making something will convey our love better. I also like decorating my room with small art pieces or anything I like from pinterest. 

My recent fav hobby is drawing and painting. It is just so relaxing and allows me to be creative and get an end product as I like it to be. I decorated my room with some that I made recently. 

Now, when I sit in my room, I feel happy. 

Art and music are two things that have always intrigued me. I took an art class during the summer of 08 while I was still in High School. What can I say, I felt in love with it. Not sure what happened, but that same passion for art that I developed in that class died the day summer school ended.  

It still amazes me how someone can create a melody that they have never heard of before, or paint something that they’ve never seen with their own eyes. I’ve always desired to have that type of creativity in my life, but the truth is that I just never really committed to it. I guess maybe a part of me believed that creativity was something you were born with, just like a talent. Regardless, a few months ago I decided to give art another try, and just like that, a new passion grew up in me. Like Denzel Washington once said on his commencement speech at the University of  Pennsylvania “To get something you never had, you have to do something you never did”.  

I first dove into digital art and started to learn the basics of it. The interesting part was that while I was still learning the basics of digital art, photography also sparked an interest in me. At that point I also decided to learn about photography. Now that I know the basics of digital art and photography, I started to practice them and I couldn’t be any more excited. 

A year ago I would have never imagined that I would develop a passion for digital art and photography. Here I am now with a weekly schedule of an hour a day either practicing photography, digital art, or Photoshop. These two new hobbies helped me discover something about art that I didn’t know before. It made me realize that creativity is not necessarily something you are born with, but something that comes through experience and practice. I’m not going to sit here and write that my pictures and drawings are now masterpieces, but I got to admit, they are a little less crappy compared to when I started a few weeks ago. In the end, it doesn’t matter how good you are at your hobby, you just have to make sure you truly enjoy doing them!