Originally Posted by Starznight

Okay I've done crafts of all sorts over the years, woodworking to needlepoint, painting, and sewing, used to make all my own clothes from my own patterns even that I sketched out. But my left and dominant hand is quickly giving up the ghost on functioning. The little needles for hand stitching are quite literally slipping through my finger tips. My three year old granddaughter could color better within the lines than me by now and probably work a crochet hook better too. Naturally I am staying far away from our lathe lest I become an episode on some ER show for having a chisel lodged in my skull. And my right hand has spent 37 years as just an accessory to make me look even, like most righties are with their left hands. I can no longer pick at the strings of a guitar, maneuver my violin bow, or depress the keys on my clarinet, or piano.

So I am now growing ever more desperate for a hobby. The work arounds I've been using to try to keep my hobbies have all but failed, 3 fingers are completely numb, the pinky to the middle and the other two only have partial feeling. My poor brain is going crazy from lack of use and I can feel myself growing depressed and frustrated with myself. But the only hobbies I can think of aside from reading excessively as I already do, require the coordinated use of at least one hand.

I can still operate my sewing machine, but require someone else to make all the cuts . I lost sports in my early twenties, lost my education in my early thirties, and now here I am just a few years later and it's taken away my music and my arts. And about 6 months out of the year for my gardening as well... mostly because it's just tooo hot to tend to the garden all the very loooooong summer we have in GA. Even my bread making days are over, and any fancy baking, I can still manage a few chocolate chip cookies on a good day, but forget about shortbreads or windowpanes, or any kind of decoration on cakes and such.

I'm just getting fat dumb and lazy it seems. I mean if you're in the mood for cake and you make cute dainty little confections that look almost too good to eat you've one spent a lot of calories making them, but also you slowly savor one of the poor little things and leave the rest alone for the day or fob them off on friends and family where your little baby can be consumed without your knowledge. Versus making a batch of chocolate chip cookies with a stand mixer, you spent next to nothing in calories to make it, and half your cookies are gone before they even touch the cooling rack. And geez I have never in my life eaten as much fast and convenience food as I have this past year... I think you could total all years before and still come up with less than this past year combined.

I need something to do, something more stimulating than playing on the iPad or reading through encyclopedias and really any books, papers or whatnot I can get my hands on. But also something I can do that won't suffer a clear failure, or worse result in personal injury or accidental death. Even writing which I used to love to do, is fading quickly as my dyslexia and memory issues become more pronounced (thank god for spell check). I'm feelings very much like the antagonist from the Conquer Worm or maybe just wishing I were.