Riffing off the “What do you do for a living?” thread, we all need to pay the bills somehow, but we also need to have something that makes us happy. The things you choose to do because they bring you joy! I think it’s safe to say that it’s critical to our mental health to have these things in our lives.
I exclude videogames because I assume most people around here play games already, but I’m also more curious about the things that take effort but bring joy like say, doing pottery, as opposed to watching TV.
I’ll start by yapping about how I draw a lot! I take it pretty seriously and do it every day (allowing some cheat days and breaks to avoid burnout), though the past few months I’ve spent a little less time on it as I plug away at some game dev stuff. It makes me happy to work on creative projects. I go a little bananas if I don’t have time to work on them. It gives me the good Brain Juice.
That’s the primary thing, at least. I could talk about game dev, guitar, 3d printing, D&D and such but the thing I spend the most time on is art.
I like playing Squash and Racquetball! Squash especially is an elegant game all about speed, strategy, spacing, and stretching. Tennis is also great, badminton, and table tennis too. Never pickled a ball though, but interested in trying pickleball some time.
I like walking the earth like Caine in Kung-Fu. It’s fun to just walk around the city or hike out in nature. Stumbling upon new spots and adventures without much of a destination can be a fun way to connect with a place. It’s meditative too. I like traveling, learning the history of a place and like visiting different landmarks! Especially love going to museums and art galleries and looking at stuff.
Oh and pub trivia. I have dedicated my life to learning useless knowledge so it is fun to apply it in different settings. I don’t go to that many concerts personally but I do like going out to comedy shows and live theater for a night out!
I’ve been drawing since forever. Had a long falling out with my art for a while until last year when I started drawing a comic again. I’ve long had problems retaining my interest in comic projects, but I think I’ve grown enough now that it’s actually pretty relaxing to just sitting down and follow my pre-made script. I don’t have to think about what to doodle, you know.
I also try to play 5-10 minutes of guitar each day to practice. I have periods where I feel too busy and neglect to play, and then a month suddenly passes and the calluses on my fingertips have disappeared and I have to slowly rebuild them again. Getting just a few minutes in daily is good enough, so I try to stick to it as long as I can.
Apart from that I like record collecting. It’s just fun to go crate digging and be very particular about what you buy. As opposed to retro games, this is also something I can do in local stores and actually find interesting stuff for reasonable prices.
I hang out with my partner and my dog a lot. I like to walk extra long distances when it’s nice out. If there’s some sort of festival going on locally I like to stop by. I’m in a couple book clubs and sometimes read the books. I made a rubber stamp that looks like a teddy bear two nights ago when I was bored cause I wanted to try. I draw comics but my illustration skills are lacking. I like hanging out with people a lot but I find it hard to get people together and Wisconsin is kind of an antisocial state which is lame. I like photography a lot and take lots of phone photos, 35mm film photos and I just got a new little digital camera last summer that I’m going to spring for some new lenses for this year probably.
I genuinely love watching two little people grow and being a part of that. Answering questions, introducing them to new things, learning what they learn and a billion other things as well. I love sharing them with the world and how proud I am of them, and hoping that they will grow up to be good kind people wherever they go, whatever they do and whoever they do it with. It’s a kind of fun I never knew how to have and now could never imagine being without ever.
I do many other things which I truly enjoy doing - such as making music, cooking, working on my house and even spending time with you wonderful people. But if I had to say what the best fun I have is, it’s being a dad and every good and bad part of that.
Kinda where I’m at. That, and I only have so much room for different hobbies at once. My partner used to sit in our balcony a lot so I’d play when alone inside, but since the building stopped allowing even vaping out there, I feel too self conscious to play with others observing, or feel I’m being too noisy, even when playing my electric acoustically.
I admire how prolific your comics output is! Each time I script something out, I realize it’s too big of a project and downscope to an easier style or shorter stoey, but I can’t seem to let myself keep things simple or be satisfied with anything once I add backgrounds and colour so I have a bunch of work that never made it online because it looks like ass.
I play disc golf, I hike, and I run dungeons and dragons games. Off and on I try to take up new hobbies so I have a bunch of nice pencils and pads to practice drawing and I have a guitar that I haven’t touched in over a year.
DND is definitely my #1 hobby because it also scratches the creative itch. I don’t want to submit fiction to magazines and I don’t want to get on stage to perform, but I do want to put my friends’ characters into precarious positions and perform/improvise for them for four hours every other week.
I can’t believe I forgot to include D&D in my own stuff! My group has been on semi hiatus due to some health issues in the group. I’m starting to really itch to get back into the DM seat. It’s just so rewarding. I didn’t know how much I like performing until I was DMing regularly for friends.
Do you play online or in person? We’re in person only, though I know a lot of folks who play online.
Well thank you, very kind of you to say. Never thought of it as a hobby before, more something that I not only have to do, but want to do and enjoy doing.
I forgot that I also do bar trivia every week and I like to travel.
I run two games, one in person and one online (monthly). I didn’t think I would enjoy doing it, but health and availability became a concern so I gave it a spin. I still enjoy it a lot, though there’s no beating the in-person experience of course. I go way over the top with prep for that game though.
I like to spoil my players a bit and draw isometric maps for a lot of encounters, and we have dozens of tiny portraits I drew of our characters for minis. For the BBEG of my campaign before the other DM took over again, I went kinda hard on a big piece of cardboard I had lying around.
I read a lot of books! Most of my reading is in science fiction and fantasy, but I read and enjoy a lot of nonfiction as well. I’m currently reading Wolf-Speaker by Tamora Pierce (I’ve never read any of these books so it’s a bit of exploring the history of the genre).
I write haiku! I don’t publish them online, though, because I have designs on getting published in Modern Haiku someday. Maybe if I translated them to another language…
I watch birds! I don’t know if I count as a birder. My partner and I really like being able to identify birds when out walking (or when they visit our balcony).
I play some tabletop RPGs too! Right now I’m in a roughly weekly LANCER game that is some of the most fun I’ve had in ages with RP. I’m also sort of playing Apawthecaria, but I’ve been real short of time lately and haven’t been able to keep up.
I journal! I consider this a hobby because I have three of the things (one to practice writing in Swedish, one for work meeting/reminder/hobby tracking, one for daily time tracking & actually journaling) and I love to devote a good 30-60 minutes to filling them out, prepping them for the upcoming days/months, using stamps and washi…it’s a real delight and was probably my gateway to not using a computer or phone for everything.
These are probably the “major” ones right now. I’m also learning guitar–I practiced today in fact–and I have a very large list of past hobbies that I pick up every now and again.
That being said, the other day my brother sent me this. A pic of the day his character (pictured) killed his tormentor (the dragon) but died in the process.
Hell yeah. I love how this picture says a lot to the players who were there but seems so silly to people not familiar with the game.
Also, to be fair, I spent hours on that map. I don’t have pictures of the ones I drew on the wet erase grid mat that took less than an hour. Those are way scrappier. I freehand everything so it gets squiggly. I just like to leverage my skills where I can.
Music can be very fun to make especially when your mindset is to experiment and try new things. When living starts to kind of suck I lean on making music to deal with emotions and have a sense of freedom in what I can make. I can imagine making music with other people is even better.
I usually have a book I’m reading but I want to give a huge shoutout to going on a long walk with a camera. Not only does it help my mental health immensely, bringing a camera creates a sort of mini-game where you start looking at things and think of how to frame them in a shot and create a cool composition. I have gotten to know my surroundings much more and learn to appreciate the small idiosyncrasies that I never would have noticed. It’s a very grounding and pleasant experience for me, big fan!
I’m a linoprint artist, and I’ve been teaching myself how to tattoo and how to make clothing for the last few years. A bunch of years back I was also a comics artist in my spare time and I wrote and drew a pretty successful webcomic (for the time) and I still draw pretty much daily. I’m also a full time caretaker for a household of four cats and a dog.
thank you.
