Need better work-life balance? Get a hobby!

Keeping chickens or another type of hobby farm is one way to relax within an affinity for animals. Photo courtesy Elizabeth Anderson Lopez There’s nothing worse than getting home at night, turning on Netflix and tuning out to the next episode of Anything But Vet Med that happens to catch your eye on any given weeknight. While it’s a blessing to have ready access to entertainment, it’s also a curse that robs us of the opportunity to engage in a more satisfyingly productive outlet for the extreme stress that accumulates throughout the average veterinary workday. Without worthwhile leisure, you’re liable to fall into the trap of a life spent medicating your anxiety with Hulu and the History Channel. Before you know it, the only meaningful, nonveterinary skills you possess get relegated to those you might accumulate via YouTube osmosis and Discovery Channel pseudoscience. None of us wants that. So, in the hopes of improving the collective veterinary psyche, I offer you this list of vet-adjacent hobbies as my veterinary public service for the month. 1) Skip the gym—start exercising with animals The gym may be convenient, but it’s an easy habit to break because it requires almost no investment. When you start exercising with animals, the bond itself makes it harder to abandon the project. Consider… Riding horses: When was the last time you took a riding lesson? Isn’t it time you got back on a horse and rekindled your old flame? Lots of us abandoned our equine goals after realizing the limited opportunities in horse medicine, but now that you are older, doesn’t it only make sense to reconnect? Running with dogs: Starting a running habit is easier when you have a buddy—more so when that buddy brings you the leash as soon as you get home every day. Keeping a hobby farm: While not strictly considered an exercise, keeping a small brood of farm animals in your backyard requires a lot of it. Carrying hay bales and feed bags to and fro, raking several times a day, lugging buckets of water…it all adds up. Plus, it’s not like you can take a day off. Once you start, you’re stuck—in the very best way possible. 2) Mind your own coop I’ve managed to keep a healthy, rotating flock of hens going for just about 20 years now. Along the way, I’ve learned much more than I ever intended to about backyard poultry management. By the way, feel free to text me any tips on hen hospice techniques. Now that my aged Rhode Island red is finally blind, I realize no one ever taught us much about ophtho issues in chickens, much less how to train blind hens to roost themselves. Now, doesn’t my blind-old-hen sanctuary sound enticing? You, too, can revive your love for veterinary medicine by gaining clinical confidence in a new branch of vet care, and run your own crazy farm, if you so choose. This hobby is also CE-friendly and eminently amenable to social media exploitation if that’s your thing. The professional development options are infinite, not to mention the endless Instagram opportunities. What’s more, the potential tax write-offs alone might prove sufficiently alluring for any of you harboring a budding entrepreneurial streak. (The eggs are a fun side hustle for those who choose to scale it up a little.) 3) Enhance your surgery skills and start a meditation practice—with needlework Almost any needlework hobby will help you develop fine motor skills easily translated into surgical proficiency. As a nervous surgeon early in my career, I credit knitting for helping me develop the manual dexterity required to gain confidence and power through my fears. Embroidery and crochet can do the same. Next thing you know, your hand ties and Chinese finger traps will make you legendary in your practice. Almost any needle-working hobby should suffice, but I find knitting’s speed, repetition, and memory are the most effective for simulating the kind of mind-body connections surgery demands. The meditative nature of this needlework also lends itself to the massive amount of after-hours de-stressing any veterinarian can benefit from. 4) Take up a musical instrument (again) When was the last time you practiced the piano or played the guitar? For those of us with a little music education in our background, picking up an instrument should not be too hard. As with needlework, playing an instrument can help hone fine motor skills applicable to all kinds of veterinary work. The best part about picking an instrument back up is you will find it way more relaxing now that the pressure is off to practice in advance of a performance. What’s more, re-learning basic fingering techniques and forcing your hands to explore new movement patterns is immersively meditative and eminently stress-relieving. 5) Practice home-cooked nutrition on your own pets Maybe the last thing you want to think about when you come home is cooking for the four-legged animals, too. But if you are the kind of person who enjoys both meal-making and spending time in the kitchen with pets, consider exploring the wonderful world of home-cooked pet food—especially if you have any inclination to dip your toes a little deeper into the world of veterinary nutrition. As with hen-raising, this pastime is amenable to CE credit accumulation and minor social media stardom. It will also bring you closer to the clients you once considered crazy for spending precious leisure time sourcing esoteric animal parts and slaving over an industrial-sized slow cooker. Who knows, it may just get you interested enough in nutrition you’ll one day elect to pursue more formal nutrition schooling than many of us received in vet school. 6) Keep an aquarium Did you ever have a thing for fish medicine? Even if you didn’t, this is a vet-adjacent hobby worth exploring for those who recognize the Zen of aquarium maintenance and want to explore a hobby the whole family can participate in. Nowadays, there are plenty of ways to get into it without spending a zillion bucks or contributing to the decimation of reef environments. These are but a few options that might appeal to the Netflix-addled veterinarian. There are plenty more hobbies that play well with a career in veterinary medicine, too (animal writing, adventure traveling, scuba diving, National Park hiking, etc.). To be sure, there are some of you who prefer to do anything but think about animals in your time away from work. For me, however, nothing says work-life balance like a hobby that helps me escape work while making me better at what I do when I’m actually there. Patty Khuly, VMD, MBA, runs a small animal practice in Miami and is available at drpattykhuly.com. Columnists’ opinions do not necessarily reflect those of VPN Plus+.

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Need better work-life balance? Get a hobby!

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