The creative side

Right, time to stop meta-posting and start to actually tell you something interesting!
I have some "hobbies", or things that I like to do when I am not doing my "official" thing, which is studying. But I used to have a part-time job next to my studies for the last 3.5 years, which took up about 16-20 hours of my week. During this time, I did very little else (productively speaking) but study and work. I don't want to complain, it is not as if I did not have the time to do anything else (paint, bake, write, blog), but more that my head was so filled up with this 60 hour work week that there simply was not enough space (in my head) to do anything else (apart from reading, interestingly enough, I always have space in my head for reading).
When I came home from selling overpriced sandwiches, the only thing I wanted to do was eat my dinner while watching TV, preferably some stupid semi-reality program which does not require your full attention and makes you feel good about yourself, or some quiz-like program (I loooove University Challenge) where you can shout the answers at the screen and make you feel good about yourself in another way.
However, I quit that job as of December 1st, and now that the very busy month of holidays and birthdays and celebrations is over, I can already start to feel more space inside my head. This blog is an example of that, but there are other things as well; I did some serious painting for the first time in years yesterday, and I am doing some baking again, and I am planning to learn how to knit soon. No writing ambitions as of yet (still busy with essay writing), but I will try to revise my NaNoWriMo 2011 novel and send it around to those who have asked for it (or maybe post it here? Not sure yet!).
The only thing I have been steadily doing for a year now is Postcrossing, where you send a card (a real, physical postcard) to "a random person" (who is still a member of the website, of course) and then receive one from another person. I love doing this, because it shows so many different cultures and customs, because I love writing and reading long messages, and because it shows me, again and again, that humans the world over have the same dreams and wishes and hopes and fears. A man from the United Arab Emirates wrote on his profile "this project shows me that there is still hope in the world, because people can still communicate, even if their leaders cannot", which I think is very true. Not sure if this would count as "creative thing" for everybody, but it does for me.
So that is the way things are standing right now. I know that doing something creative is important to me, and that I should take the time to do it, but it is so frustrating when you cannot give something your full attention and energy that most times you simply just don't do it. I want to stop not doing things. Not because this is a New Year's resolution or because I think it will make me more interesting or "a better person" or whatever, but just because I miss it, and I think I need it.
So hopefully you'll be seeing some paintings, postcards, pictures, or writings appear on this blog very soon! And if you don't, it may even be because I am busy producing those very same things!