Here’s a good message from Rebecca Watson: you should get out and do something other than work.
I suspect it’s a little too obvious what my passion has been for the last few years, and I won’t even ask you to guess. Instead, tell me what you’ve been doing for fun!
…get out?!?
The heat index today is in the high 90°Fs – and that’s the coolest it’s been in a week.
Ask me again in October.
Believe me, if I had the talent and patience to make some sort of career out of TRPGs, I would quit my torturous call center job in an instant.
I fear I do have a tendency to tinker with my computer even after a day of working as a programmer…
That’s why I often give myself a kick to get up and do some of the other things I enjoy. Favourite hobbies are biking and photography: Putting my camera in the backpack and hoping on my bike after work is the best way to unwind for me. Or just grab the camera and take a walk in the local forest.
While I usually carry a macro lens I have to admit I’m one of these horrible people who hunt for tastelessly colourful butterflies rather than spiders. ;-)
Today’s combination of 33°C, moderately strong winds, possible thunderstorms and a light migraine are a good excuse to stay inside, though.
Currently, my hobbies are video games and picking heavy things up and putting them down. Otherwise I am working on my Master’s, so when I am not doing that, I am working or playing with my daughter or spending time with my wife…
I want to get back into running, may start using that treadmill my sister dumped at my house :P
I really like to cook! We have some great farmer’s markets near me, as well as some amazing seafood suppliers and asian markets. A couple of my favorite games are going to a good restaurant and then trying to recreate a favorite dish at home, or going to the library and getting a good ethnic cookbook and learning to use some new ingredient I have never tried before. Newest ingredient on the tinkering list is garbanzo flour. My spouse is still working and her lunches are often the envy of her coworkers.
Sound advice from R.Watson, and Kurt Vonnegut said the same damn thing:
https://www.boredpanda.com/kurt-vonnegut-shares-advice-with-students/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic
he really got it. Just watching TV/surfing the net won’t cut it, and there’s lots of people who seem uneasy with the idea of free time.
I personally like to do stuff with wood, cook a bit, do old style B&W photography and dribble paints all over the place. It keeps the mind occupied and those photos can be popular as gifts, in particular for younger people who basically never saw one, poor dears.
I started sewing simple dresses and bags again (I started back up because of those awesome geoscience prints you mentioned a month or so back!) and I’ve gotten into crocheting cute stuffed animals as gifts. They’re things I can do in the evenings while the kids (teenagers) are puttering around and probably don’t need anything but it’s still nice to just be together in the house.
The surgeon general, Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, wrote this in April for the New York Times: We Have Become a Lonely Nation. It’s Time to Fix That. In the piece, he links to the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services Social Connection webpage. Dr. Murthy’s ideas resonated with me as I’m old and even though I still work, I work from home. My millennial son is also troubled with loneliness and isolation. My partner not so much, as she’s always been a loner.
With my 68th birthday coming up next week, I’m easing into retirement now, working several days a week as an online teacher. I keep pretty busy on my free days – three little granddaughters aged 7, 5 and 3 keep me on my toes, hiking in the local hills a couple of times a week, camping two or three times a month and regular motorcycle road trips. I can’t do much about growing old, but I don’t have to grow up :)
One difficulty I had with my final quarters of teaching on-line due to Covid and then retiring was the loss of the daily work contacts I had with people- I really enjoyed interactions with almost all of my colleagues. One thing that helps me now is a weekly group walk at a local wildlife refuge with some like-minded individuals who came from diverse areas and careers. Some are much more knowledgeable than me, particularly concerning plants, insects and herps, but the group ethos is sharing information and joy in nature, as well as sometimes ranting about politics.
I’ve elevated the nap to an art form, does that count?
I lack the drive to go out and socialise. Thus, my social network consists almost exclusively of people I know from work (plus a handful of neighbors and remaining relatives).
When I am forced to retire the prognosis does not look good.
I create fairy houses in my garage ceramic studio and leave them in Oakland city parks for kids to find.
Ive pretty much given up on fishing after nearly 60 years. New passion is being a rockhound. Yep, I pick up chalcedony and petrified wood and put the in my rock tumblers and make them shiny. Now they are on every flat surface except the floor and I have a little red wagon full of polished rocks on the floor but thats as far as The Boss will let me go.
Living on the Mendocino coast, I go out for long walks every day. Busy social life with music events, dancing, potlucks and the like. Went to seven events in the last five days. This is not typical, but at least two social events a week is typical, even in the winter. Racked up 12.4 miles of dancing last Saturday.
Don’t watch tv; don’t go to movies (but perhaps once or twice a year); read one to two books a week.
@13 gregmusings
That’s awesome!
I make quilts and give most of them to an organisation that distributes them to various charities depending on their size /theme, but I ask to have mine given to foster kids and dv survivors by preference. Sometimes I make one to keep myself.
I also make clothes.
My primary school aged daughter was wide eyed surprised that “quilting is maths?” So I have a secret plan to teach her more maths in the guise of making pretty patterns.
I started learning jazz improvisation on piano, and by now I can almost not completely disgrace myself some of the time.
Had to give up ballroom dancing, haven’t restarted that yet but I could.
#5
Oh yes.
Gram flour, onion bhajis, pakoras, and that cool farina Italian pancake
I also make TRPGs, All Us Gamers. And I dabble in making animation videos which is becoming more of a thing. However I also hold down a paying job.
I read aviation history and astronomy, and I am getting back into scale modeling after a while spent caregiving. Going to build a Navy torpedo bomber called a Devastator next. Terrible airplane, but has an outsized place in history for having a squadron from the Hornet wiped out completely in the early stages of the Battle of Midway.
In 2021 I mentioned to my therapist that I had always wanted to be a pilot, and was just waiting for the “right time.” She asked me why not now, so I started flight training and got my private pilot’s license at the end of the year. It is a great hobby, one of the things I really like about it is that when I’m flying on not thinking of anything but flying. I was so excited to start taking my family on little flying trips. Then Russia invaded Ukraine, and things got complicated. My Ukrainian wife’s parents moved in with us, then moved back. Then we took in my brother in law’s daughter, and helped another family settle here. I stopped flying for several months, and felt guilty every day I didn’t have a plan to fly. Eventually last year I realized the war was not stopping anytime soon, and flying would help me deal with the stress. I’ve taken it back up, and am taking my family on little trips again. I’m trying my best to keep it up.
#18 ajbjasus
Yes, that “cool farina Italian pancake”, which also shows up in southern France as socca, is one of my major targets. Not quite there yet quality wise, but getting close.