Beauty and Lifestyle
I Needed Hobbies Beyond My Skincare Routine
H. Werrett
There was a point where I realised skincare had quietly become my only hobby. Not in a healthy “I enjoy taking care of myself” kind of way either. More in the sense that it had slowly absorbed every small pocket of free time I had during the day and whatever mental space was left by the end of it.
I’m 34, work from home in digital marketing, have a toddler, a dog, and a personality that naturally leans pretty homebody. I used to think of myself as creative. I liked making things. I liked nature, slow mornings, wandering through bookstores, little rituals that made life feel textured and personal. Somewhere between parenting, work stress, exhaustion and being permanently attached to a screen, those parts of me slowly faded into the background without me really noticing.
My days became repetitive in a way that’s hard to explain unless you’ve lived it. Laptop open from morning until late afternoon. Slack notifications. Half-drunk coffees forgotten around the house. Cleaning up toys while answering emails. Standing in the kitchen trying to finish work messages while dinner cooked. Having more conversations with an AI during my week than my friends, then collapsing onto the couch at night, too mentally overstimulated to properly relax but somehow too emotionally flat to do anything meaningful either.
And somewhere inside all of that, skincare quietly stopped being self-care and became consumption.
I fell deep into skincare TikTok, Reddit threads, ingredient analysis, rosacea advice, seborrheic dermatitis forums, “holy grail” routines, fungal acne theories, barrier repair content, and endless product recommendations. I could lose hours researching ingredients I could barely pronounce while convincing myself the next routine adjustment might finally fix everything. The worst part was that I genuinely thought I was helping myself.
In reality, my routines were becoming harsher, more complicated and more emotionally consuming than my skin probably ever needed. I was over-exfoliating, constantly changing products, hyper-fixating on redness and texture, and spending an embarrassing amount of my life trying to ‘optimise’ my face.
Sometimes I think I treated my skin like a never-ending project because it felt easier than confronting how disconnected I’d become from the rest of my life. Because the truth was, I didn’t really have hobbies anymore.
At some point, skincare became my entertainment, my decompression, my comfort ritual, and weirdly, part of my identity. When I had a stressful parenting day, I scrolled skincare content. When work overwhelmed me, I researched products. When I finally had a quiet hour at night, I used it consuming more information instead of actually doing anything that made me feel present.
The accessibility of my phone made it worse. It was always there. Easy to disappear into during difficult moments. There were times I caught myself half-listening to my daughter while mentally absorbed in some conversation about skin barriers or inflammation or whether a cleanser’s pH level was secretly ruining my face. I don’t say that proudly. I think a lot of parents probably understand the strange guilt of physically being somewhere while mentally being somewhere else entirely.
Around that same time, I realised something else too. I had stopped creating moments worth remembering. When you work from home and naturally stay close to home, life can quietly shrink without you noticing. Days start blending together. Same rooms. Same routines. Same shops. Weeks passing strangely fast because nothing inside them feels distinct enough to hold onto.
I was constantly consuming, but barely participating in my own life.
Natural Skincare and Making Things Simpler Again
Eventually, I realised I didn’t just need simpler skincare. I needed space in my life for other parts of myself to exist again. Around that same time, I stopped chasing complicated skincare routines too. I stopped layering harsh actives over already irritated skin and slowly drifted toward gentler, simpler products instead. Fewer steps. Fewer ingredients. Coconut oil soaps. Calmer routines. Brands whose philosophy felt less aggressive and more grounded in simplicity, like Corrynne’s all-natural and eco-friendly skincare approach.
Using a few gentler products like their Fuller’s Earth face wash and stripping back my routine made more difference to my skin than years of aggressively trying to “fix” it ever had. My seborrheic dermatitis calmed down. The redness in my cheeks softened. But more importantly, skincare stopped dominating my thoughts all day.
And strangely, once it stopped taking up so much space in my brain, other parts of my life started returning too.
The Hobby That Made Me Pay Attention Again
The first thing that slowly changed me was scrapbook journaling. Or junk journaling, memory keeping, whatever category it technically falls under online. I still don’t really know. I just know I stumbled across a few videos one night and instantly felt something in my brain exhale.
Paper, glue. Handwriting, folded receipts, failed initial attempts at water coloring, and tiny scraps of ordinary life preserved instead of immediately forgotten. It felt so different from everything else consuming my attention at the time. There were no notifications waiting for me. No pressure to improve myself. No algorithm trying to keep me engaged for another hour. Just slow, tactile creativity.
I bought a beautiful passport-sized leather notebook from an amazing Japanese brand called Travellers’ Company, with a huge global scrapbook journaling subculture surrounding it, almost impulsively, and became mildly obsessed with collecting little fragments of life to put inside it.
Bakery paper from a café visit with my daughter. Receipts from bookstores. Coffee sleeves. Packaging that was too pretty to throw away. Tiny notes, stamps and stickers, pressed leaves, random little scraps and ephemera most people would throw in the bin without thinking twice. Tiny pieces of paper from cutting out things started appearing all over the house. The kitchen bench. My desk. Jacket pockets. Somehow, I loved that.
I didn’t expect it to change the way I moved through my days as much as it did. Ordinary moments started feeling meaningful again because I was finally noticing them. But the hobby also confronted me with something uncomfortable. Because I worked from home and naturally spent so much time at home, I realised I actually had very little “content” for my journal compared to the people I saw online filling pages with travel, restaurants, nights out, and constant experiences.
Mine was mostly grocery receipts and coffee stains. And honestly, that realisation hit me harder than I expected. Not because I wanted some glamorous life, but because I realised how small and repetitive my world had quietly become. The journal didn’t create that feeling. It just revealed it. I remember sitting at the kitchen table one afternoon, surrounded by paper scraps thinking, “I actually don’t do very much outside surviving the week.” That sounds sad written out, but weirdly, it became the beginning of something good.
The notebook gently pushed me back into the world again. Not in some dramatic life-changing way. I didn’t suddenly become extroverted or start travelling constantly. I just started creating tiny moments worth remembering.
I’d take my daughter to a new cafe or instead of automatically staying home again. I’d wander slowly through bookstores while she slept in the pram. I’d sit in parks longer instead of rushing home. Sometimes I’d buy flowers simply because they looked beautiful sitting on a journal page later.
The notebook quietly expanded my life without me really noticing it happening. And for the first time in years, my hands were making things instead of just holding my phone. It changed my evenings too. Instead of sitting on the couch half-watching television while scrolling skincare content for hours, I’d sit at the table with tea and glue sticks while the house finally went quiet after my daughter fell asleep. My dog would curl up nearby. Rain hitting the windows. Tiny paper scraps everywhere. I’d cut up cool elements from packaging or receipts from the week and suddenly feel calmer in a way scrolling never actually gave me.
I started noticing how many beautiful little moments had been disappearing simply because I wasn’t paying attention to them.
Walking Without Trying to Optimise It
Around the same time, I also started walking differently. They weren’t fitness walks really. Half the time I wandered slowly enough that it probably barely counted as exercise at all. I think I just needed reasons to leave the house that weren’t errands or obligations. These weren’t my dog’s walks any longer. They were mine and he just got to come with me.
When you work from home and naturally spend a lot of time indoors, days can start feeling strangely airless. Walking became a way to interrupt that repetition. I stopped taking the same route every day. I stopped wearing headphones constantly. I stopped treating walks as something to rush through while mentally somewhere else.
Instead, I started wandering. Different streets. Different parks. Tiny cafes. Little corners of my own suburb I’d somehow never noticed despite living nearby for years. I started paying attention again. The smell of rain on warm pavement. Flowers hanging over fences. Handmade signs outside cafes. The sound of birds right before sunset. The way certain streets looked completely different depending on the weather.
My walks became slower and more curious. They also became little scavenger hunts for my journal. Receipts, leaves, wrappers, business cards, tiny fragments of ordinary days that suddenly felt worth remembering again. My dog loves the change of scenery and new smells every day, and so did I.
I think those walks reconnected me to the physical world after spending so much time mentally trapped inside screens, routines, and self-criticism. Not in some profound spiritual way. I just felt more awake to my own life again.
Bonsai and Learning to Leave Things Alone
The final thing that unexpectedly changed me was bonsai. Very amateur bonsai, to be clear.
I’m not sitting here with centuries-old trees and deep horticultural wisdom. Mostly, I just started wandering through hardware stores and garden centres looking for cheap little nursery plants with interesting trunks that looked like they had hidden potential underneath all the overgrown branches.
There was something strangely calming about it. Trimming things back slowly. Removing excess growth. Repotting tiny trees into small pots and understanding that shaping something carefully takes time. Bonsai rewarded restraint. That felt important for me because so much of my life before that point had become about adding more. More products. More routines. More information. More correction disguised as self-improvement.
Bonsai felt quieter than that. It taught me that sometimes improving something has less to do with adding and more to do with paying attention to what’s already there and the slowing down, intentional approach needed for this hobby seemed to fit the change I was making in my life beautifully.
Around the same time, my skincare became quieter too. Less irritation. Less obsession. Less time spent trying to analyse and optimise every tiny thing about myself. Honestly, I think the biggest change was just having more space in my own head again.
Life feels fuller now (excuse the new skincare product pun), even though from the outside it probably looks very ordinary. I still work from home. I still spend a lot of time close to home. I still have stressful parenting days and moments where I fall back into old habits.
But life feels textured again, just like my new scrapbook. I notice things now. Seasons changing. Morning light through trees. Small conversations with my daughter. Coffee shops, walks. quiet creativity. Tiny moments that would have disappeared completely a year ago.
Skincare also returned to its proper size within my life. It stopped being my hobby, my coping mechanism and my endless self-improvement project. It became what it probably should have been all along. Just one small supportive part of a much bigger life.
And I think that’s what I was actually looking for the entire time. Not perfect skin. Just a life that felt like mine again and skin that is glowing more because of it.
