I often find the line between “hobby” and “things I enjoy doing” a rather thin one indeed. For example: I enjoy watching TV, but who doesn’t? Is TV watching a “hobby”?
Regardless: I play World of Warcraft; surf the web; read a lot, write a little less; watch TV and movies; and enjoy console gaming. When I have money I travel, but it’s been years since I’ve had money, so there’s that. Similarly, I enjoy going to the boats to play the slots, but see the previous sentence.
Other way around for me: I learned writing with a ballpoint, and totally gave up on cursive, developing a print hand instead. When I started using fountain pens, I rediscovered the sensual pleasure of script.
I have become facinated with how humans respond to hobbies and why we take something on as a hobby in the first place. I am convinced that how we are exposed to something can be a major factor in how we view that same thing from that point on.
I did an accidental experiement once. I was on vacation and my truck broke down. I limped it into a campsite not far from the highway on a small river bank. My hobby is making primitive bows and arrows so I set up shop at my campsite and went to work making bows. It didn’t take long before a little audience assembled and I found myself teaching them how to do what I was doing. I had some extra bow staves in my truck as well as some tools and before long about 5 of us were making bows. The social experience is what made it so pleasurable. The women were socializing, the men were socializing and before long we had about 4 adjoing campsites all particapating in some kind of a craft. We all had a great weekend and departed with big hugs and exchanges of contact info. A very positive experience!
Several of those same folks stayed in touch and took on primitive bow making as a hobby of their own. Since that time I have done numerous workshops for hardware stores or private groups. A much smaller percentage actually decides to follow up and continue with it as a hobby. They are simply watching me do something very boring and don't really enjoy the full experience.
This has led me into crafting what I call my dream project where I have been developing a model based on exposing people to a wide variety of potential hobbies or crafts in such a way that they will better be able to actually " experience" what they are doing in a more complete way with other like minded people.
This is now my current hobby.I like taking pictures of road signs.
I’m not the only one. There must be hundreds or possibly thousands of us on the internet.
I like taking pictures of fire hydrants.
I have a number of different interests that will wax and wane in the amount of attention I put into them.
I have a coin collection I haven’t touched in 20 years and a Piano I haven’t played in 10.
I go through periods where I’ll play Golf every weekend for a while, then not play for 2 years.
I like going to watch Collingwood play (Aussie Rules Football),
Cricket on the TV,
Anything that involves drinking beer,
Gardening
Home renovation
I just bought a Banjo last week, so I’m going to try to put time aside to learn how to play that. Getting my head around where to put my fingers is going to need repetition to get it to stick.
I make jewelry. It is the best hobby ever. I get product to wear after I make it!
I also do jigsaw puzzles and like to write.
I’ve photographed a few fire hydrants also.
I’m starting to sound really weird. :dubious:
My hobbies involve two main things: engineering and music.
For the engineering, I like hobby electronics, microcontroller programming, hobby machining, metalwork, and cnc. I also like drawing/drafting. There’s a lot of overlap among those.
For the music, I like playing (with) my synthesizer and making recordings. I’ve tried building MIDI sequencers and such, so there is some overlap with the electronics. I also play guitar.
Other things I’ve tried but just couldn’t get into were ham radio and rc cars.
I build models, mostly steampunk-y fantasy stuff.
But at a recent model show, I sat in on a presentation on controlling LEDs with Arduino boards, and just a couple days ago I stumbled across a very reasonably priced Experimenter’s Kit–so I think I’m gonna start fiddling around with Arduinos now. I think it’s the way to take lighting models to the next level.
