What are your hobbies?

General
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I feel like a lot of us that have joined this forum are gamers to some degree, and that’s awesome! I love games just like most of us here do. I personally enjoy hobbies outside of gaming though, and it got me wondering, what hobbies do you enjoy?

Obviously games take up a good chunk of my hobby time. But I also enjoy building, tinkering with and running RC cars, particularly a pair of Tamiya kits that you build yourself, that my partner and I have. They’re a tonne of fun, fine tuning all the different settings and seeing what works best, then going out on the weeking and driving them around.

Not only that, but I enjoy full size cars too. We own a pair of Volvo V40 estates (wagons) as well as a BMW E38 728i. We both trained as mechanics so we do 95% of the work ourselves. Again, working on and modifying them is great fun and feeling the differences in each car when you take them out for a drive.

I suppose they feed into my tinkering nature, as I’ve taken apart, built and modified PCs and consoles as well. What can I say, I love taking stuff apart. What about you, what do you enjoy?

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I love learning and experiencing all sorts of different hobbies because it scratches the curiosity itch. So many fun hobbies and so little time, recently I’ve just been saying screw it and diving into learning hobbies instead of planning optimal ways to experience different hobbies.

My biggest hobby throughout my life was basketball but I stopped playing for the most part when covid hit. Gained a ton of weight and had a bunch of leg issues that kept me from playing after covid settled down. Been spending the last few years fixing my body so that I can run and jump again but I’m 33 so I think at this point my goal with that hobby is just dunking one more time before I hang them up for good and just shootaround lol. Watching basketball has been a blast this year though. In my opinion the NBA has been the most fun I’ve had watching since 2009ish.

Besides that I like cooking, and dabbling in drawing/painting from time to time. Every few years I find a new hobby that I dive into that costs a bunch of money. I was big into basketball shoes when I was younger but I always loved Lebrons and I haven’t loved most Lebron releases this decade besides the throwbacks and I don’t really have room for anymore pairs of shoes.

I loved collecting Pokemon cards a few years ago but I’ve put that on hold until this current hype cycle dies down. Over the past year and a half I’ve been really into keyboards because I love all the colors/designs of the boards and the different types of sounds and feel you can accomplish with different combinations.

Recently I’ve been trying to learn photography and videography because I love recording stuff to look back on with my friends and family. I work in IT and I’ve been getting into a bit of home labbing to expand my skills and cut down on subscription costs. Also, I’ve been wanting to learn video editing in depth because I used to make NBA mixes in the early days of Youtube and I would love to make one more that I’m really proud of.

I would love to dive more into cars as a hobby. Always wanted to restore a second generation Chevelle but we just don’t have the room for it.

The e38 is a sick car. The e30s are sick too! Did yall restore the e38 or is it something yall have owned all along? Any intentions of rebuilding any other cars in the future?

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Wow you really have tried a load of different hobbies! Damn hahaha. I can’t say I’ve ever been into sports, only really played a bit of football in primary school. No one in my family was big into any sports either so I never had the exposure to it… at least until we got Wii Sports xD.

I do appreciate your curiosity. I think for me that’s what’s driven me to so many different hobbies that often revolve around taking stuff apart. Finding out how things work and being able to repair them is amazing. Taking something that wasn’t working and fixing it is awesome hahaha.

Also yeah Pokemon cards are cool! I had some maybe 10 years ago but sold them all to a girl down the street for stupid cheap… wish I hadn’t done that now heh. My neice has gotten into them in the last couple years too so it’s cool seeing her fill binders with them.

Yeah we love the E38 too. We got it back in 2024 as a rolling project. It’s just the base 2.8 6 cylinder but I love it. It’s been off the road for a bit over a year while we do some work to it but it’s gonna be coming back this year. I’m usually more of a Volvo guy but I love the E38s. Only thing with UK cars is rust… so yeah it needs a bit of welding too. Guess what my next hobby will be xD

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Also I forgot to say. I like what you said about not optimising your hobbies. I appreciate having structured time and planning activities, chores and hobby time etc. But trying to min-max your time just gets tedious and un-fun for me. Sometimes you need to just go with the flow. Like with games I’ve tried for a while to have one or two games on the go at a time, but while I enjoyed that focused way of experiencing them, it would leave me playing a game when I wasn’t in the mood for it and not enjoying it as much.

Now I generally play what I’m in the mood for. Like I got Resident Evil Requiem when it came out as my first RE game (own most of the REmakes on the GameCube but haven’t played any yet). I played a good chunk of it but took a break for a month or so and only just gone back to it now I’m in the mood again and I’m really enjoying it.

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Like @Scootsyy, I’m very curios and like to learn about new things. Often leaving myself with too many interests & too little time.

I’m really big into soccer. My mother was really into it throughout her youth & into adulthood, so I started playing pretty much as soon as I started walking. Played consistently up through high school, which included some travel play that had me playing in Midwest regional tournaments. College I went to didn’t have a team nor much for intramural play so I sort of fell out of playing it & now I just don’t have the running stamina like I used to. So, now I just keep up with professional play, primarily watching Premier League, but typically keeping up with Championship & Bundesliga. Gives me a good reason to get up early on weekends in particular. My team has been pretty trash the past couple years so it’s been a rough watch lately.

Dabble in music a bit, dad was always a big guitar guy and now it’s related to the work I do. Have a bass guitar, getting a paranormal Telecaster soon that I’ll likely be upgrading over time. Really like the idea of building up a parts platform on a guitar (similar sort of vein as Computer parts). Not good by any means, just self learning some songs so that my dad, brother, cousin and I can all get together and jam from time to time.

TCG is something I’m into as well. My fiancee’s friends SO’s all are into Magic, so when the ladies get together the fellas all get some games of commander in. One is really into a lot of TCGs, so him and I just went to a local Supershow TCG event this past weekend.

Related, wrestling is another thing I keep up with, mostly watch AEW nowadays for a multitude of reasons. Simply put it’s the best product out there nowadays, but keep up with WWE & loosely NJPW as well.

Couple summers ago I got into a tinker phase where I was scooping up old Gameboys that were listed as not working and trying to resurrect them. This got me introduced to electronics repair a little bit, so have dabbled in a couple re-shelling, re-soldering & repairing projects that have run parallel with some retro game collecting interests. This has also crossed over into music a little bit with guitar pedals, where I have a DIY pedal kit that’s been on the back burner for a while now. Just don’t have a dedicated workbench for all that quite yet so I’ve slowed down with all that (plus am just worried about really borking some higher value stuff still, as my solder skills are not quite at a level of comfort yet.)

Photography/Videography casually, do a lot of it for work so it’s become something I’ve done less with my free time over the years— but I love to keep up with new tech and software advancements surrounding it.

Cars are one of those “one day” hobbies for me, I just do not have the financial means nor physical space to tinker with stuff like that quite yet. I got a soft spot for 90s/Y2K speedy street style cars that I get out my system with racing games currently. Used to work at a car museum in high school as well so that only heightened my interests & respect towards the hobby. So it sort of just exists in a space where I like to watch content on it, but don’t really have an avenue to explore it personally very well.

Forgot to add, so ninja edit. Computers obviously a big one, love to build machines. Been getting into home labing, although it’s been on the back burner for a little bit as I have a move coming up and just feel unmotivated to set up self-hosted services until afterwords.

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Nice question! Obviously for me gaming is a big one, but that should come as no surprise.

Another big hobby of mine is being busy with music. I’ve been playing electric guitar for 6 years now, and 5 years ago I joined the orchestra in my village. This is sometimes a bit hard for me since can’t read a single note lol but this is what keeps it fun and challenging. I also DJ at parties sometimes, but nothing big.

I also like sports. I try to go for a run or a walk at least every day. Since my job involves a lot of sitting, I think this is important. Hence I also like to spend time in nature, and especially watch and listen to birds. Birds are awesome animals in my opinion.

My most recent hobby has to be me becoming a board member of a local beer tasting club. I’ve had a passion for special beers for a while now and I’ve been a member of the club for a few years. They recently asked me if I could join them since they were searching for young people with some knowledge in IT. I was of course honored and accepted their bid right away. I also like to be real intentional with this hobby and really take my time to analyse, smell and taste a beer I’m drinking.

Besides my job being in IT, I also like to develop stuff in my free time. I play with Arduino or just Python scripts. Also I like to mess around with Linux, Bash, Docker and system admin related stuff in general. Cyber security is also a big one for me. I like to keep up with news related to this topic.

For the rest I also like to read, solve crossword and Swedish puzzles, write blog posts or just journal. Oh yeah and I also collect Pokemon cards from time to time. So in my life I’m pretty busy with a lot of stuff, but I really like it that way. In the winter I tend to take it easier and not do as many things, but now that the weather is getting better and the days are getting longer, I feel a lot more motivated and inspired by a lot of stuff.

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I journal a lot. I got a journal for like everything. The process of writing down my thoughts or what I need to do makes it more tangible, and I remember it more. Other than that I DJ from time to time. My folks always pushed me to do more with DJing but to me, I never really wanted to be the wedding/corp DJ nor do I want to do clubs and festivals, I just like mixing my jams and finding interesting mashups and playing around. My partner is really big into reading so I’ve been reading with them as well. Its mostly fantasy novels, but now I’ve fallen into a rabbit hole of books about games after reading jason schreier’s trilogy of books. Now I’m reading literal textbooks on game design and analysis.

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Oh I have several other things I enjoy doing other than (video)gaming. Currently I’ve been in a mood for tabletop games, specifically I’ve been playing a lot of the Battletech wargame, and getting back into TTRPGs with old school D&D inspired games. I too am a car guy, but I don’t own a cool car, I just like to do simracing, my favorites were doing downhill battles in japanese roads, and rallying. I played guitar for many years, had a band and all, but nowadays the guitar just sits there, sad and unplayed. I would love to get back into that, maybe pick up a bass too. And for now, lastly, on the same vein of Battletech and plastic robots, I also really love Gundam, and I build gunpla model kits to put on my shelf. It’s really relaxing to make my little guys look cool.