I’m not talking about the sheer joy of enjoying your hobbies. I mean, have they helped you become more confident? Have they helped you get jobs? Did you meet someone with the same interest and fall in love?
My main hobbies are writing, singing, and playing video games.
I’m involved in an online written fantasy roleplaying game, and not only have I made a great many friends there over the last 15 years, but the act of roleplaying as several sexually liberated, extroverted, talented and intelligent women has helped me, a guy who’s sometimes not altogether comfortable in his own skin, gain confidence in the real world. I’m much more comfortable talking to attractive women than I was 15 years ago, even though that hasn’t really translated into getting into very many romantic relationships. In any event, the conversations with interesting people, male and female, are something that was missing from my life 15 years ago, and the difference has really been that my writing has helped me become more confident. There’s an inherent value in roleplaying. That’s why psychiatrists use it.
My other creative hobby, singing, has helped me make a lot of friends too, by way of being in many choirs. Some of my fondest memories of my grandfather, who passed away 12 years ago, involved me sitting next to him at the piano bench, learning how to sing. God, how I miss that man. And I’m forever grateful that he, and my mom and dad, and my other mentors growing up, instilled in me a lifelong love of music.
Woodworking has not only been fun but lets me make useful stuff and make a lot of repairs. As the kids were growing up I made hundreds of wooden toys for them (mostly Brio size trains, tracks and accessories). Built a seesaw for them. Repaired so many items including a major repair on our oak coffee table. Then I also made 3 matching end tables to go with it.
My reading light is a Lighthouse I made myself. I’m also an electrician so I did every aspect of the lamp. I can design things pretty well and don’t need to buy plans.
I started on woodworking as maintenance and repair of old wooden sailboats. Then I just kept going and got pretty darn good.
Less a hobby and more a skill, I do most of my electrical work and I can’t remember the number of ceiling fans I installed for people over the years.
For years I built and repaired computers. Still do some of this. I replaced the screen on my daughter’s laptop about 2 years ago. Ran the cat-7 wires for the house myself and in the last house ran the cat 5. I’ve always done telephone work to until it stopped being a thing.
I also paint and repaint D&D figures. We’ve been able to pick up a lot of inexpensive figures and modify and paint them for use for D&D. I was 3D printing for a while and painted up many of those.
The combination of all of this lets me do so many home repairs that it saves a huge amount of money.
Let’s see - I’ve been playing music of one sort or another for over 50 years now. I met my late spouse via music - I was looking for a new band and he was looking for a new band member. It worked out. Performing in public helped my confidence as well, although I no longer do that.
I’ve been writing a long time. I’ve sold a little bit of it along the way. The proceeds helped pay for my flight training that lead to a pilot’s license. Also I think it made me better at expressing myself in general.
I actually went to college to get an art degree. In addition to selling some art work along the way, and working as a freelancer for awhile, the stained glass I did with my dad netted me some money that I threw towards college. The anatomy I had to study to get the art degree came in handy when I worked for medical researchers, which was the best paying job I’ve ever had, likely will have, and got me an actual pension to go with my current 401(k).
My video-gaming has been mostly entertainment, but I did meet some friends that way and during the very rough financial period between 2007-2015 at one point my on-line gaming friends bought a new computer with great graphic capability after my old one died, which not only enabled me to continue playing but also help my late spouse earn money with computer graphics and some CAD/CAM work.
So… although I hadn’t considered it before your question I have to say that most of my hobbies have met the criteria for “a tangible improvement in your life”.
I certainly agree. For me, woodworking provided me with an opportunity to create and express my creativity in furniture making. I also agree it has given me the ability to make many repairs around the house.
I did calligraphy for years. I learned various alphabets (the calligraphic term for different fonts: Italic, Carolingian, Gothic, and so on; and along the way, I learned layout and design. I could also do print fonts, such as Times Roman, completely by hand. While I’d never render hundreds of pages by hand in Times Roman (that would take forever), the lessons learned from my handwritten layout and design in various alphabets for various school and personal projects translated beautifully when I was a technical writer who also designed his own books. The fact that I could do that, meant that my skills were in demand, and I worked pretty steadily in layout and design and writing for years.
Music is another hobby. I’ve never done it professionally (well, maybe the band I’m playing with buys me a beer if I sit in for a song with them), but it has helped me become more confident in front of an audience. Today, I have to speak in some various situations (courtrooms, for example) where confidence is essential, and I just think back to those days playing for a few hundred people in a club, and hoping I don’t hit a wrong note. Public speaking is easy, compared to that.
Video gaming led to me getting married, sort of. I met my wife on a game forum but she doesn’t actually play; it was one of those forums where the out-of-topic sections take over and she was dating someone who did play and she started hanging out on the OOT sections. Skipping the story, we eventually started dating and got married some 12 years ago. I suppose that having a number of online friends I regularly talk to and play with on Discord meant I had more social outlets during quarantine than many people.
More materially, I’ve made a little bit of cash buying, fixing/upgrading and selling PCs. Not a ton but enough to get a couple hundred bucks here and there.
Playing D&D forces me into social interactions (and got me out of the house, pre-Covid). Especially running games since there’s no hiding from the spotlight and you need to keep stuff under control. I was running “open” games anyone could join so there was a regular stream of new people to have to greet and make feel comfortable and try to remember names for next time. None of which is really in my comfort zone but I’d rather practice it in that context than at some industry event.
My hobbies include working on cars, so I’ve done a lot of my own maintenance. I can do an oil change in my driveway faster than I can get through a Jiffy Lube. During the pandemic, I avoided sitting in repair shop waiting rooms or riding Ubers around to leave them. I can fix brakes, cooling systems, starters, etc. cheaply, which has saved me a bit of money over the years. I can evaluate used cars reasonably well so I generally avoided paying too much for cars or buying lemons (although I own a lemon now, ironically. I was pressed for time when shopping and I got sloppy). I like being able to help friends with their car problems, even if it’s just charging a battery in a car that sat too long.
Of course, the flip side to that is that I’ve spent enough time on the track with my cars to burn up effectively all my other savings. I’m also at the stage where I am willing to tackle more complicated repairs but that often means buying a tool I may never use again, so it’s not clear I’m saving a bunch of money. It’s still a pretty rewarding hobby for me.
My writing keeps me sane. I’m just not the same person when I’m not writing.
In 2015 I made a decision to join a critique group. It was my first time getting feedback on my writing. The group itself was kind of mediocre, with a lot of people who really only dabbled. In a freak twist, the creator of the group, a wonderful man, was diagnosed with leukemia and ceded ownership of the group to one of the most prolific members. A handful of us got together and really talked about what we wanted out of a serious writer’s group. We rebranded, changed the name (The International Writers Syndicate - a joke because we have a Canadian.) We became a juried group, so now people can’t just drop by because they’re bored.
Well, these people became the best friends I could ever ask for. We come from all ages and all walks of life but we’re united by a love of fiction. Collectively we have a bawdy, irreverent energy but we are serious about writing. We’ve been through all kinds of shit together, COVID included. One of us opened up a restaurant so that’s our home base now. We do crits over beer and burgers and it’s like my sanity touchpoint. For the last 15 months we’ve been meeting over Zoom. It’s one of the few social groups where I feel 100% comfortable with myself. One of the members recently described it as our church, and that’s an apt analogy.
That group has become synonymous with my writing experience and I feel like I lack nothing. If I’m never published, that’s life. I’m already living the dream.
Putting aside the social aspects, the only benefit I have gained from playing board games is that it has given me a much greater understanding of several basic economic principles.
The biggest change it has made is that I have a feeling of real accomplishment. I’ve been through several jobs over the years, and the effects have been pretty ephemeral in most cases. But I have completed books, articles, and stories that remain as testament that I did something, carried it to completion, and have a tactile result to show for it. that’s no small thing.
I also got several trips out of it. And a few meals.
Oh, and money. But not a heck of a lot. But of all the rewards, the money has been the least, both in quantity and importance.
I make woodcut prints. Mostly landscape and nature type subjects. It gets me out hiking and exploring for inspiration. Rainy evenings are for working on prints.
When I was around 8-10 a friend of my parents had bought a Radio Shack 150 in One Electronic Kit for HIS son, but he wasn’t old enough yet. This was in the hey day of the CB radio craze and I would sit in his truck and talk on the CB. So he ended up giving me the electronic kit. That led to a career in electrical engineering.
I play the bagpipes. Playing in pipe bands has led to networking that has resulted in my making a lot of friends, including through meeting acquaintances of other pipers who themselves are not pipers. I have also gotten various gigs through which I have supplemented my income.
I write. This does have a hobby aspect but I have always wanted to get into publishing - since at least 10 years old, when my teacher took my class to the library to meet Canadian young adult literarure writer Gordon Korman. It has since resulted in my publishing various articles and one book. That book was written for ideological reasons and the royalties I got for it are small. However, it has, without my expecting it, resulted in two commissions for solicited co-written book projects that I am now working on and am already being/will be paid for.
My main hobby is chess, followed by strategy computer games and roleplaying (D+D.)
I got incredibly lucky when I was offered a job as the first-ever full-time Head of Chess at an English private school.
I was expected to teach / coach chess; organise school chess events; run school teams in local leagues + national school events (preferably winning them!); do chess publicity (to make the school known for chess); arrange chess events in school holidays etc.
After I got settled in, I was asked to also run a couple of weekly activities (on one afternoon and one weekend.)
As things were going really well, I cheekily offered to run a roleplaying club and a strategy computer games club. “That’s fine - do you need a budget for those two?” came the reply.
So the School bought some roleplaying figurines + manuals, plus 5 copies each of ‘Civilisation 2’ and ‘Railroad Tycoon’.
This meant I was being well-paid to organise chess and play those two games.
I took up juggling about 16 years ago. I’m still pretty rubbish at it- I can impress kids and drunks, but that’s about it- but the social group I’ve met through that has had a major impact on pretty well every aspect of my life.
To take a current example- I needed somewhere to rent for a few months due to the complications of meshing together work contracts, rental contract and moving elsewhere in September. I got offered a flexible time room by someone I know through juggling- the stuff I can’t fit in there is being kindly stored by a different friend I also know through juggling. Someone else I knew from the same group even proofread my application for the course that’s starting in September…
They’re the people I can let my guard down with. The few juggling skills I do have, and the performances I did (if you set things on fire and do stuff with them in a group, you can impress even if you’re crap) were pretty good for confidence building as well- and weirdly my balance has dramatically improved.
I’ve always wanted to know how to fix and do stuff. Like lay my own bathroom tile or fix my car. I have a very cerebral job but I’ve always thought in another universe I would have enjoyed making and building and doing.
I love to make things. I sew and over the years have made all our curtains, altered all our clothes, bed linens, slip covered couches and chairs, etc, etc. So very tangible improvement I’d say!
And from time to time, I would be approached to make all manner of usual, think hallowe’en costumes, and unusual things. Like an enormous cover, from parachute cloth, for a van, that would be whisked off for a Tv commercial, revealing a new logo. Hubs had to help me feed it through my machine, and I had to set my machine in the largest room to accommodate it. When it was completed we had to take it into the street to fold it up. And I once made a giant tarp like cover for an ice racing boat, to cut down on drag when they towed it to events.
Basically if someone said, ‘Hey, think you can make this?’, I’d always say, ‘Sure, I’ll give it a try!’
But it’s not just sewing, since we bought our house I’ve taught myself to frame doors and windows, cut and lay tile, even build a stone wall. I just like making things!
