I’m young. I’m 23. I’m about to graduate law school, am with a woman I plan to make my wife, and I am currently at a crossroads where I start to contemplate and understand what I want my “adult” life to look like.
To make a long story short, I think there are some soothing hobbies that I’ve avoided from some gut, stupid desire to not be “old” or “boring.” I already make music, read a lot, cook a lot, work out, and am learning a new language. These new hobbies would include pottery, growing food, hiking more, biking more, cheese making (???), reading more in the evenings, having more quiet evenings, keeping chickens, keeping bees, etc. I think I cling to certain things like cannabis to bring this calm and relaxation into my life when I perhaps could find it sober in these activities.
So I’ve made it this far and I’m talking regularly with counselors, on medication, etc. I’m doing everything on my end. My very simple question for SDMB is what hobbies ended up being much, much more trouble than they’re worth? Who has been down this path before and what guidance do you have for someone who’s at this juncture?
Of course, this is a personal thing. It depends on what you like.
One thing that I’ve found doesn’t work for me is competitive hobbies, like golf or billiards. I’ve tried both and it just ended up being the worst point of stress in my life. When the most stressful, worrisome part of your week is going to the Pool Hall, then you probably shouldn’t be playing.
It sounds like you’re looking for hobbies that can help you to relax and unwind. I’d say that, in general, I’ve found that hobbies in which I’m working with my hands, but don’t need to necessarily be fully mentally focused on them, have filled that niche for me – I build model rockets, play guitar, and run; in the past, I’ve also painted miniature figures for playing Dungeons and Dragons.
Your chosen career is going to involve a lot of “brain work,” but not necessarily much (if any) creation of physical things (unless you count law briefs), so a hobby that lets you do something like that may be rewarding. I have a similar sort of “mental only” career (I’m an advertising strategist), and being able to keep my hands and body occupied, and let my mind unwind, is an enjoyable thing. Even something like doing yardwork, or shoveling snow in the wintertime, can do that for me.
As far as some of the specific hobbies you listed, I’m not sure that I see any of those as particularly “old,” and I often read about younger people enjoying things like cheesemaking or beekeeping. The one thing I’d note about keeping chickens or bees (or similar hobbies) is that they will require space, which you may not have in whatever place you wind up settling down one you get out of law school, and you may also find yourself in a city where keeping those animals isn’t allowed. Also, those are hobbies that require ongoing, daily involvement (especially the chickens), which may not necessarily fit with a busy work and personal schedule.
I enjoy small jigsaw puzzles. 300 pieces is about right.
This would be quite relaxing.
The bigger puzzles stress me out. It’s so frustrating to sort pieces and keep everything organized. I don’t want to be challenged! I’m trying to relax.
I bought some vintage 1950’s jigsaw puzzles that I’ve never put together. They’re just too hard and I don’t have the time to spend on them.
Playing tabletop RPGs can be fun, but it can also be stressful (getting adults together to play is never as easy as when you were a teenager/in college, everybody has a different idea of the kind of game they want to play, there can be interpersonal issues when things don’t go as somebody expected, etc.) It’s still fun and I still enjoy it, but it has definitely been stressful.
One of my hobbies is playing MMORPGs like World of Warcraft. It can be very soothing if you don’t get caught up in any of the competitive stuff like raiding. It can be stimulating (doing quests, following storylines) or almost zen-like calm (fishing, for example). One of the reasons I enjoy it is because it can adjust to my mood–social or antisocial, competitive or not, lots of brainwork involved or basically putting myself on auto-pilot.
Also, it’s cheap - most MMOs are either free to play or no more than $15.00 a month.
I keep bees. It’s an interesting hobby, but it’s not something I would regard as soothing, especially if, like mine did this year, they decide to become tiny flying assholes that sting every opportunity they can get and then swarm while they’re being so narky you can’t get into the hive. That’s not especially typical, but you do need to regularly check them through the summer- most people recommend checking at least every 7-9 days during swarming season or you risk losing a swarm and causing big trouble with neighbours. It’s also not something you can generally get a sitter for, so I’d factor that in.
Ps, I’m in my 30s, so not exactly old yet. In my old city beekeeping club, there was a good chunk of members my age or younger. Round here, I think I’m the youngest in the group.
I play another MMORPG (Final Fantasy XIV), and I agree with this assessment. I enjoy gathering and crafting in the game, and those are activities that, like real-world gardening or crafting hobbies, let me just zone out and do things.
I can’t speak to any of the specific hobbies you mention, as I don’t do any of those things, but I think the question is too personal for my opinion to matter anyway. Kenobi 65 mentioned “hobbies in which I’m working with my hands, but don’t need to necessarily be fully mentally focused on them,” which makes perfect sense, but honestly it’s the opposite for me–I need something that requires my full attention to keep intrusive, stressful thoughts at bay. Scuba diving fills that niche for me; it’s very “thinky,” what with the navigating underwater while monitoring my diminishing air supply and keeping track of my buddy (and his air supply, which might be dwindling faster than mine), and, on a deeper dive, my remaining NDL time, and timing that swim through the rock canyon just right so the surge doesn’t slam me into that rock covered in sea urchins, and adding or dumping air from my BC to maintain neutral bouyancy as I go up over a rock and then down again, and equalizing my ears, and… what? I have a trial tomorrow with that sovereign citizen client who screams at me? I can honestly say I completely forgot. (For just a little while.)
So maybe I’m weird, but that’s what works for me. The best way to figure out what works for you is to try it. Don’t invest too much at the start so you won’t feel guilty about giving it up if it’s not for you, and don’t let this stuff become just another obligation that stresses you out (growing food would definitely fall under this category for me; even a succulent feels like a serious commitment.) And don’t worry about your hobbies making you old. Old people have had the most time to figure out what’s worthwhile, so just think of yourself as precocious.
I build models. I tell my friends that building a model is a series of gradually escalating disasters that you have to recover from until finally it’s done, and you can quit. Unsurprisingly, none of them have taken up model building.
I’m never very far from one of my many puzzle books. I do a minimum of 30 minutes of Sudoku a day and I’ll take a stab at just about any variety of pen and paper puzzle. Unfortunately, I tend to get frustrated and bored with them sooner than I should.
Someone upstream mentioned painting figures for RPGs. That was my hobby as well until my hands got too shaky.
I’m going to buck the trend on RPG and mmorpgs and caution against. Not saying no, I don’t know you, you have to judge for yourself, but if you have a lot of work or other stress, gaming can quickly become an obsession as the escapism can be quite mentally emmersive, the lore, the new spell or armor, achieving that next quest or destroying the enemie’s fleet of space frigates and what have you. Pretty soon almost all your free time is spent playing.
Somebody here, i forget who, or in which thread, said they randomly cut and nail/screw/glue peices of wood together. Not building anything, just escaping into working the wood for a bit.
I embroider dish towels using those iron on designs. I find it very soothing and friends and family can always use new ones, even if it’s just for cleaning.
I played Warhammer 40K until I just couldn’t devote the time to painting figures, and it was never rewarding to me anyway: no matter how many hours I put in or what techniques I used, my stuff never looked much better than mediocre.
On the plus side, it did make me appreciate my ability in other visual art forms, because while I hated drawing and painting as a kid, when I tried them again last year as an adult I find that I’m much better at them than mini painting. I think I hated them as a child because in school they were telling you what to draw and what techniques to use, and the stuff my friends were drawing on their own never spoke to me so I didn’t have any inspiration.
ETA: I’d also get bored in arts and crafts because I’d rather be reading or learning other subjects. When I moved elementary schools my mom made sure I was in a class that was relatively light in arts and crafts.
Heh, most people I know would struggle to find two tabletop RPG nights in a week (though I agree that MMOs can be quite time consuming)
I also paint minis and it went from entertaining and fun to see my progression to something of a chore when I felt like I had to get things ready for the game table. I’d wind up needing six goblins and not really like how the figure was sculpted and it’d feel like a chore. Eventually, I moved to “pawns” (cardboard stand-ups) for my games and now paint for enjoyment again without the looming sense of “needing” these figures painted on a schedule.
I believe having a hobby that you can put down for a while, and then pick back up at a later time is key. Sometimes, life gets in the way, and the hobby could become an unwelcome chore. I took up tropical fish for about 10 years, until I started dreading the maintenance as too time intensive.
Something like art or sculpture can be done, stopped, restarted, whatever depending on your time.
If you’re looking for a physical activity, you have to take into account how much time you’ll need to commit to it. Golf, for example, can be a huge consumer of time. I won’t say waste because it depends how much you enjoy it. These days, I very rarely play for this reason, and I’m retired FFS. On the other hand, I cycle, and that is (or can be) also a huge consumer of time, but one I’m happy with.
Just sayin’. There are certain physical activities where you need to consider how much time you want to commit. And you need to think ahead as to whether your commitment might increase in the future.
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“Physical activity” jokes - line on the left, please.
Knitting has become one of main areas of expertise, but there’s a lot of math involved when you make your own designs.
Art, which some people think of as a hobby but which for me is just my habit of being–a necessity for my consistence–is incredibly stressful. Every time I begin a new project, I start with an idea in my head if what it will look like. When its first stroke or stitch or word comes into being, I’m overwhelmed with utter panic that it’s completely wrong and I will never achieve what I want. The entire process of creation is a physically sickening attempt to fix each mistake as I make it, to overcome each insurmountable obstacle I make for myself. I know I’m done with a piece when my back unclenches as the panic recedes.
(For just a little while.)