Dementia and hobbies

 Many people have hobbies to keep them going, but like me many hobby’s are left behind, either because we cannot remember how to do them, or they become too difficult and unsafe to keep up.

I used to love wood turning until it became too dangerous to carry on doing. Even with the emergency stop buttons, I simply tried to stop the machine in other ways, often ending up with injuries.

So my son took it apart to stop me using it. It was sad, but I realised that it was needed to stop me hurting myself badly

During this time I used to love photography, a relaxing hobby, and something I really enjoyed doing.

However this became difficult when I started to forget the settings. I always loved the manual settings, but realised that I had to forget that and move to automatic settings. Been that can be hard on the wrong day, but that’s life.

On the odd days I would carry a camera around with me, but would just not be able to set it up, this would lead to me getting upset and depressed, but I knew the next day, things my be different and they may work, so it was a case of trying to keep going.

A friend of mine was the same, and got close to giving up but was advised to try an exhibition. This was set up for him and the response was amazing.

The reason being that people with dementia look at topics in different ways to professionals, who need everything in the correct place.

This proved a point to me so I carried on. It’s my view that we all look for different things in a photograph, and it’s down to your own view, and no one else’s. I guess it’s a bit like art, some people like traditional art, while others like modern art etc.

A few years ago I was at a dementia meeting, and a local artist came in with some pictures which were very modern. I vaguely remember looking and thinking something like, what on earth is that.

After a while people started looking at them and then commenting about them, things like I can see a door or window.

After looking again I too could see these things, so I guess it’s what your eyes can see in everything. Never judge a book by its cover comes to mind.