What are your hobbies?

[Jake_Jones]

@DinoR

For me it’s always been a remarkably complicated and difficult question. There’s interests that tend to ebb and flow (or disappear completely). I don’t have a collector urge. I rarely meet the level of commitment of self labeled hobbyists in any one area. There’s themes that stick with me for long periods but they can morph or cross hobbies. I tend to be more a generalist with wandering attention.

Hobbies? I’d have to say none.

Meh, so what? Your hobbies don’t need to be regulated or on a schedule. They should be fluid, not rigid. I don’t subscribe to the theory that near-obsessive traits are required to claim an activity as a hobby like msmith537 does. For me, a hobby is something that I enjoy doing. I don’t think it requires any staunch commitment whatsoever. Some years I’ll homebrew 40 gallons of beer, other years 10. Other guys brew hundreds of gallons a year. It’s still a hobby of mine. The fact that other people do more of it than I do or are better at it than I am doesn’t mean I’m a poser. I brew my own beer when I feel like it, because I enjoy it and I want to.

I’m a certified scuba diver for the past four years. I didn’t mention it in my original response because I’m not diving twice a month or more. It’s not possible where I live unless I wanted to dive in freshwater lakes (I don’t). I take one dedicated dive trip a year and make 8-10 dives over 4-5 days. Last year I got in a single dive day on a road trip to the Florida Keys, because I was there and there was diving available. It’s still a hobby.

If I enjoy doing something and I haven’t actively, consciously stopped doing that activity, I consider it a hobby. There probably is a time limit on it. The time limit is flexible depending on the activity, but I think a year is a pretty good benchmark for most.

When the time comes that I haven’t been on a dive trip for two years, I probably can’t call diving a hobby unless I have pretty solid plans for a dive trip. When the time comes that I haven’t brewed a batch of beer for a year, I probably can’t call home brewing a hobby unless I have ingredients in transit. When the time comes that I haven’t fired up the smoker for six months, I probably can’t call BBQ a hobby, etc. Whenever I’m willing and able to pick up the activity again, it’s one of my hobbies again.

I don’t want to feel obligated to my hobbies. If I’m not doing it for my own gratification on my own schedule, it ceases to be a hobby. This doesn’t mean you can’t be obsessed with something and still enjoy doing it. It means that you can enjoy doing something without being obsessed by it.

If your hobbies aren’t fun anymore and begin to feel more like obligation than leisure, you need new hobbies.

[kayaker]

@MrDibble

diapered gilding…

Google refused to help me here.

[pool]

I play the electric bass guitar that’s pretty much the only hobby I have that I can think of, but I enjoy it so much and playing in bands with people. But I’ve been playing since high school and not bragging on myself but I’m not one of those people that sits there and just plays the same part as the guitar I like to slap, do two hand tapping and use harmonics, use the double thumb technique a little bit too, I like to think that I am pretty good.

[VunderBob]

[ul]
[li]Model railroading in HO scale;[/li][li]Train watching;[/li][li]Preservation cooking (canning, fermenting, drying, etc.);[/li][li]Baking;[/li][li]Conventional cooking;[/li][li]Amateur electronics, mostly to support my model train empire;[/li][li]I considered volunteer EMT and firefighting to be hobbies, but I’ve retired from those because of old age;[/li][li]Vegetable gardening;[/li][li]Grilling/BBQ;[/li][li]Woodworking;[/li][li]Taking MOOC classes;[/li][li]Travel;[/li][li]Fishing and camping, hunting not so much;[/li][li]Trap shooting;[/li][li]Starting to dabble a bit in geneology.[/li][/ul]

[MrDibble]

@kayaker

Google refused to help me here.

It’s gold leaf illumination that uses diapering techniques (mostly involving being anal about the levels of gesso in different parts of a trellis-like pattern). Here’s an overview of techniques.

[VunderBob]

Too late for edit: I’m also considering learning to play the didjeridoo, if only to annoy my wife.

[kayaker]

@MrDibble

It’s gold leaf illumination that uses diapering techniques (mostly involving being anal about the levels of gesso in different parts of a trellis-like pattern). Here’s an overview of techniques.

Thanks! Interesting stuff. There goes my resolution to get important work done today.

[Chefguy]

At the moment, it’s guitar, woodworking and genealogy, pretty much in that order. I’ve drifted away from photography, although I’ve always been pretty good at it. I guess I could call cooking a hobby, but I do less experimentation nowadays. Gave up on coin collecting a few years ago and sold nearly everything.

[bump]

@Jake_Jones

Meh, so what? Your hobbies don’t need to be regulated or on a schedule. They should be fluid, not rigid. I don’t subscribe to the theory that near-obsessive traits are required to claim an activity as a hobby like msmith537 does.

I’d almost argue (but not quite) that the more intelligent someone is, the more likely they are to have multiple hobbies that they sort of cycle through, rather than an obsessive focus on one single hobby. I mean, I kind of rotate through mine on about a 2-3 year cycle, with the exception of the seasonal ones like gardening.

But otherwise, I’ll go through a 6-8 month period where I’ll want to cook anything and everything, make sausages, cure and smoke bacon and pickle various things. Then after that urge is done, I’ll decide that I want to get back into shooting. So for 6 months, I’ll go to the range, the sporting clays course, look up various rifles and pistols on the web, etc… Then it’ll be homebrewing for a while, then serious video gaming (not just the 30-40 minutes here and there that I always do) for a while, etc…

I just can’t see myself doing one thing obsessively every day for years.
(yes, I forgot a few interests/hobbies on my earlier post)

[TheFaerie]

Knitting, weaving, beadwork, needlepoint/cross-stitch, sewing/quilting. My craft room is stuffed to the rafters.

[HoneyBadgerDC]

@bump

I’d almost argue (but not quite) that the more intelligent someone is, the more likely they are to have multiple hobbies that they sort of cycle through, rather than an obsessive focus on one single hobby. I mean, I kind of rotate through mine on about a 2-3 year cycle, with the exception of the seasonal ones like gardening.

But otherwise, I’ll go through a 6-8 month period where I’ll want to cook anything and everything, make sausages, cure and smoke bacon and pickle various things. Then after that urge is done, I’ll decide that I want to get back into shooting. So for 6 months, I’ll go to the range, the sporting clays course, look up various rifles and pistols on the web, etc… Then it’ll be homebrewing for a while, then serious video gaming (not just the 30-40 minutes here and there that I always do) for a while, etc…

I just can’t see myself doing one thing obsessively every day for years.
(yes, I forgot a few interests/hobbies on my earlier post)

Like you I have always had multiple hobbies i would dabble in. Sometimes I would find myself a little obsessed with something for a while but it would wear off. I got bit by the primtive bow making bug about 17 years ago and it is just now barely starting to calm down a little. All hobbies are not equal.

[JustinC]

I subscribe to the view that anything you do more than once a quarter and think about more than once a week - and don’t get paid for or have to do - is a hobby. You might be less enthusiastic about your chosen hobby than others, or more so, but it’s still a ‘regular*’ activity done for pleasure.

*The Earth regularly circumvents the Sun, although not very often.

So, now that I’ve got around my lackadaisical way of filling my uneventful life…

My hobbies are photography - I’m not all that good, but enthusiastic. I love taking photos in various places but I haven’t the knowledge or patience to take really good photos. They’re more of a travelogue.

Which leads me onto my second - travel. I love to travel, see different countries, experience different ways people see their own ‘best’ foods, fun times, tourist hotspots, graveyards, history etc. My last trip was in Georgia and Armenia, which are very different to most places I’d been to before.

My third, which I’m most enthusiastic about and is arguably the most boring, is reading about economics. I won’t expand as the internet has only so much capacity.

Next up; food and drink, home made. I often enjoy when I eat in a decent restaurant, if only that were moreso. OTOH I always enjoy drinking the beverage made myself or others, it’s just not as easy said as done around here. Jake Jones, do some reading and you’ll find a substantial amount of research on making homebrew. I think the #1 ingredient isn’t the ingredients or vessel, it’s making sure everything is cleansed

And I couldn’t list my hobbies without a reference to film and music! I love watching/listening, dissecting, debating and reflecting upon such a varied, substantial, rewarding and fulfilling hobby. I’ve recently discovered some movies/albums don’t sell so much but are much better than the stuff you see paraded on every media. There are so many different films/albums, some will annoy you, some enlighten, occasionally inspire, some pass the time. Film and music are different, I can listen to an album or song a dozen times, I can’t do the same with a good flick.

[bup]

@GrizzRich

I throw pottery

You’re the reason all the Indian artifacts are broken! Jerk.

[Rhiannon8404]

Knitting
Crochet
African violets
Shooting
Gardening

[swampspruce]

Guitars- playing and building/repairing,

Reading (although less so these days, too little time),

Cooking and baking,

Cycling- riding (used to be hardcore MTB, now more trails and commuting) and eventually building a custom recumbent,

Learning an annual new and useless* skill, last year was intro quantum physics (Not kidding.), This year will be laying carbon fiber and building with it.

Winemaking- kits so far, and I have a bunch waiting to be made. I’ve kind of let this one slide as I despise washing those fucking bottles. I’ve been putting each batch into larger bottles as I go, so at some point I figure I’ll be drinking straight from the 23 L carboy.

*Useless insofar as I probably wouldn’t put it on a resume or make a living doing it.

[WordMan]

@swampspruce

Guitars- playing and building/repairing,

Reading (although less so these days, too little time),

Cooking and baking,

Cycling- riding (used to be hardcore MTB, now more trails and commuting) and eventually building a custom recumbent,

Learning an annual new and useless* skill, last year was intro quantum physics (Not kidding.), This year will be laying carbon fiber and building with it.

Winemaking- kits so far, and I have a bunch waiting to be made. I’ve kind of let this one slide as I despise washing those fucking bottles. I’ve been putting each batch into larger bottles as I go, so at some point I figure I’ll be drinking straight from the 23 L carboy.

*Useless insofar as I probably wouldn’t put it on a resume or make a living doing it.

Waitaminnit. Do you not always drink beer, but when you do…you prefer Dos Equis?

[jtur88]

The only two I ever got really absorbed in were:

1, Stamp collecting, which I started at age 10, and four different times in my life I started a new stamp collection.

2. Birdwatching, which I started at about age 40 and continued avidly until I lost my eyesight, and still continued to go out and identify birds by ear.

One might call traveling a hobby, since I’ve been to over 120 countries, all at my own expense on my own time.

[phall0106]

Reading (always), gardening (more veggie than flower or ornamental), chicken-keeping (new hobby), preserving foods (canning and dehydration now–I’d like to do fermenting), baking (when I feel like it), decorating and rehabbing furniture, sewing, some painting (although I’m not very good at it).

I’m an incredible homebody and I guess it shows in my hobbies.

[LH75]

I am a shooter.

[Jake_Jones]

@JustinC

Jake Jones, do some reading and you’ll find a substantial amount of research on making homebrew.

I’m not sure what I said that made you think I wasn’t aware of this. I make homebrew every year, usually somewhere between 2-5 batches of 5-6 gallons each, sometimes more. I brew from malt extract, use adjuncts and bottle my beer. I could spend a ton of time and money getting into all-grain brewing and kegging, but I haven’t. I pursue the hobby at a level I’m comfortable with. I’m utterly confused as to why you felt the need to tell me that there is a lot of information available on homebrewing.

I think the #1 ingredient isn’t the ingredients or vessel, it’s making sure everything is cleansed

This I disagree with on both points. Number one, like most human consumable things, ingredients are the single most important factor in the quality of the final product. The quantity, quality and types of malt, variety and form of hops used and when they are used in the brewing process and the type of yeast used in fermentation are all key factors in the quality of the final product.

Number two, I think that obsessive sanitizing is a waste of time and that most beginner instructions place way too much emphasis on sterilization. Yes, keep it clean but too many instructions emphasize sterility to a degree that borders on fear mongering. For Christ’s sake, human beings have been making beer for well over 5000 years. You don’t need to autoclave your fermenting bucket or bottles to avoid contaminating a batch of homebrew.