What I find funny is that most of my hobbies have a heavy dose of routine in them. For example, I love completing the daily solitaire challenge. I also love filling up the World Cup sticker album every four years. I enjoy immensely exchanging stickers with friends and online, and filling and reviewing my list of missing and extra stickers.

As you can see, the pleasure of checking to-do lists is very close to my heart. This is not to say that I haven’t had more creative hobbies. One Christmas I made colorful necklaces for all my girlfriends. I think I may try that again soon, and this time with my daughter.

I also love coloring Mandalas, as you may have noticed. My beloved gave me a coloring book, way before coloring became such a frenzy. He just knew that I would be into it, and he was right. In addition, my job back then was quite stressful, so having a meditative outlet was crucial to my sanity. It still is.

As I think I have mentioned here before, it was coloring one evening that I decided to drop a dissertation topic that was clearly never going to get done. It came to me like an epiphany that unless I worked on something I was interested in or knew about, I would never finish my studies.

The next day I wrote to my advisor and set up a meeting. I was all excited, even considering writing a general book on primary commodities. My advisor gently brought me back to reality by noting that for a few years already, every December, I had come to him with a new big idea that unfortunately had yet to materialize. Smaller ideas would be more feasible, perhaps.

He also reminded me that I needed to follow the academic requirements of the dissertation. I could write a general book… any time… after graduation. I guess we will see about that.