Hobbies

[choffer]

I'm always very jealous of people who've found their creative outlet and either have that as a hobby or are lucky enough to have it as a job. I've always thought of myself as a bit creative but have never quite found a pursuit that satisfied me. I might take up cross-stitch.

I'm not sure I have hobbies. I have collections - a music collection and a movie collection that would be larger than most but not near enough to challenge desi1 or bicks. 

I take some half-decent photos but I don't really know what I'm doing technically so it's usually just restricted to holiday snaps.

Other than that, I collect too many phunnay or ice rink pictures for the benefit of the VT Massive but most of my spare time appears to be spent finding new and innovative ways to annoy my other half. Evidently I'm quite gifted in that regard (I feel a post brewing for the relationships thread). 

Edited March 1, 2019 by choffer

[mjmooney]

1 hour ago, Paddywhack said:

I'm not sure all of these can be described as hobbies, but some things I dick around with are;

 

Running - I've been doing it casually on or off for years but I've taken it a bit more seriously in the last 18 months. I've now got a nice little medal collection, a few personal bests that I'm proud of and a parkrun stat page I like to just look at...(I like stats).

Gaming - Not much to say about this, but I reckon I play at least a couple of hours everyday on either my playstation or switch. Might seem like a waste of time, but meh, keeps me quiet and happy.

Guitar - I learnt guitar and wrote songs when I was a teenager so I could become a rockstar, record albums and play to millions of people all around the world. That obviously didn't happen, so now I just pick up my acoustic every now to play the latest song I've googled the chords for. I think my cat enjoys it more than my wife does and my cat hates it.

Local History - This is a weird one, but I have a fascination with old photos of buildings (especially pubs), canals, train stations etc from around places I know. I like spotting what's still remaining today or how areas have changed. I'd love it if you could go on google street view and select any decade from the last 150 years.

Comics - I collect old Beanos and Dandys, annuals and comics. Not actively, because I was spending too much money on them just for them to sit in the loft, but if I'm in a charity shop or at a car boot I'll keep an eye out.

 

My little boy is due in June, so I'm looking forward to getting in to lego and getting annoyed at him for doing it wrong.

Apart from the gaming you sound like a younger version of me. 

[Paddywhack]

37 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

Apart from the gaming you sound like a younger version of me. 

Do you think it's something you may have got in to if you were born a few years later?

[AVFCDAN]

Hobbies for kids these days seem to be online gaming and nothing much else. My local park is a ghost town these days, go back 20 years to when I was approaching my teenage years and I was down there everyday either playing football or tennis or just messing around.

Edited March 1, 2019 by AVFCDAN

[mjmooney]

59 minutes ago, Paddywhack said:

Do you think it's something you may have got in to if you were born a few years later?

Almost certainly. I did have a period in the 80s and 90s where I played a lot of combat flight sim and football management games. But as they got more and more realistic, they also got much harder to play, and (for me) less fun, so I stopped. 

[MickeyC_UTV]

I started and finished reading this thread about 4 hours ago now, and I have been here in quiet contemplation and self-reflection since; 

On 27/02/2019 at 14:59, Chindie said:

 

So, what do you fill your days with doing when aren't at work, or asleep, or desperately trying to stay alive?

I did a whole heap of stuff when I was younger and spent hours at a time doing it without feeling guilty for what others would maybe see as wasting time or what not, from painting Warhammer figures, listening to music, going to gigs, reading, drawing, writing, spending hours in record and book shops and sports. 

As I got a little older and started a family of my own there was less time to spend on those things that gave me so much enjoyment earlier in life, less disposable cash (I was in a crap job at the time) and a realisation that I do get obsessed with things e.g. I bought a mountain bike to get to work (as there was a bridge closure which meant my journey to work would have been as long as my shift) it couldn't have been more that £150, but by the time the bridge re-opened I had upgraded everything on the bike from wheels, crank, breaks, shifters everything except the frame but that was next on the list, there was some sort of latent OCD which became more evident later on, but that is for a different thread.

My interests/hobbies were influenced by my son then my daughter as they were/are growing up although I have attempted to introduce them to the things I enjoyed when younger. Now my son is at Uni and my daughter is nearly a teenager I'm beginning to have a bit more 'free' time and now trying to get back into some of those things I enjoyed or explore new things.

But anyway in response to the question Chindie posed, usually lurking around VT mainly Off Topic, occasionally Other Football, with the odd skirmish into On Topic before running and hiding again.

 

Edited March 1, 2019 by MickeyC_UTV
text resizing

[chrisp65]

I grew up where you could hear the arcade games from my house. So as a kid, I got pretty good at that first generation of games, Asteroids with the little black n white line triangle of a spaceship being my fave.

Strangely, as the games and graphics got more sophisticated I lost interest. I think maybe lager and pool was more of a gravitational pull than Berzerk and Evil Otto.

We've got a wii console and an x box sat under the TV, I don't think either have been used in 6 months.

[MickeyC_UTV]

1 hour ago, Paddywhack said:

Do you think it's something you may have got in to if you were born a few years later?

I think you and I might have a different understanding of the word 'few'.... 

[mjmooney]

15 minutes ago, MickeyC_UTV said:

I think you and I might have a different understanding of the word 'few'.... 

It's called 'tact'.   

[sharkyvilla]

I've started playing a bit of ping pong as they've got a few tables to fill empty shops in the local shopping centre.  It's surprisingly fun and seems like a decent workout as well.  There's not really many facilities in my town, I think it got voted the worst in the country for things for under 30s to do (albeit I'm slightly over 30 now).  That doesnt help and is partly why I blew a few hundred quid on my own pool table as there's nowhere else to play apart from the grimmest pub in town.

[tonyh29]

48 minutes ago, AVFCDAN said:

Hobbies for kids these days seem to be online gaming and nothing much else. My local park is a ghost town these days, go back 20 years to when I was approaching my teenage years and I was down there everyday either playing football or tennis or just messing around.

yep my walk home from school , involved stopping at the local park with a dozen mates  to play football until it got dark , or someone did it's my ball and i'm going home cause you disallowed one of their efforts on goal

 

nowadays I rarely see anyone doing jumpers and school bags  for goalposts

 

 

[Xela]

11 hours ago, AVFCDAN said:

I don't say this to sound harsh but from what you post on here it does seem like your work/life balance isn't weighted correctly.

You are absolutely bang on. I know I need to shift my balance, its just i struggle to do it - partly down to me being a control freak with my work!

 

 

[Xela]

20 hours ago, villa4europe said:

i think you should take this to the japan travel thread! £8k is a crazy amount of money for 3 weeks in japan, i think i spent maybe £2.5k there in 2 weeks and saw a fair bit

Having a harem of Japanese ladies dressed as schoolgirls in your room for 3 weeks doesn't come cheap! 

[Xela]

5 hours ago, AVFCDAN said:

Hobbies for kids these days seem to be online gaming and nothing much else.

Plus stabbing each other. 

[lapal_fan]

8 hours ago, mjmooney said:

Apart from the gaming you sound like a younger version of me. 

Oh god, are you clearing in the woods too? 

Edited March 1, 2019 by lapal_fan

[mjmooney]

27 minutes ago, lapal_fan said:

Oh god, are you clearing in the woods too? 

I've been on here for fifteen years, I thought you'd have noticed. 

[Mark Albrighton]

Not a great deal really, certainly not on a regular basis. I go running two or three times a week. This thread has made me think I should look into doing more things.

I used to play table tennis - I was even moderately competent at it. Haven’t played it in years though, likewise snooker, used to play that every week for years. Wasn’t so good at that though.

Like Paddywhack, I like old pictures of nearby locations I’m familiar with, a fair few are hung up around the house. A few of around the village and some of local landmarks, Ironbridge and the like.

I like discovering bits of history, both local and further a field. It’s not particularly academic, it’s more anecdotal in it’s nature. I don’t know lots about, say the Napoleonic Wars, but I like reading about stuff like the Hellfire Club for instance. Generally I’m trying to learn about various things across the board on the off chance my daughter ever asks me about something, I can appear vaguely knowledgable.

It might be nit picking but I think of all that history stuff as an interest, rather than a hobby. I perhaps wrongly think of a hobby as being something more practical/physical.

Edited March 1, 2019 by Shropshire Lad

[il_serpente]

My (halfway) serious hobbies have pretty much dropped by the wayside after kids and marriage, unfortunately.

I did a lot of bicycling, living in an area that is fantastic for that.  Climbing a mountain road through the redwoods, picking up a sandwich at a deli and having lunch on the coast before climbing back over the hills to head home used to be one of my favorite weekend pastimes.  A great way to see tremendous scenery, get great exercise and experience some exhilarating descents.  I once had cars pull over to let me past 3 times in one day going down a winding mountain road!  I did 3 of the 5 mountain passes of the Markleeville Death Ride a couple of times.  100= miles, 10,000 feet of climbing (125 and 15,000 for people who did the whole thing), starting off shivering at dawn and burning up in the sun at noon.   I hit 55 mph going down ones stretch, the thought of which now terrifies me. Now the best I do is ride to work a few days a week in the summer.

I skied 25-30 days a year for about 10 years and raced recreationally.   I got quite good, winning the league my final year.  You know you're serious when you board a plane for a weekend trip with more than one pair of skis and poles.  Now I'm lucky to get in a couple of days per season.  Commitments at home on the weekends, the hassle of dealing with traffic to the mountains on Friday and Sunday nights and the cost are real disincentives.

Perhaps the one I miss most in some ways is playing the trumpet.  I had a group of people with whom I played small group jazz regularly.   Mostly jamming at one guy's house weekly, but we worked up songs and played publicly at parties, fundraisers and such and occasionally had gigs for tips or minimal pay at a coffee house or restaurant in San Francisco.  A couple of them moved away and I had a kid and it got difficult to keep the chops in shape.  You can't really pick up a brass instrument sporadically and play because of the physical conditioning required, so I don't play.   I now dabble with the piano instead, and I've gotten good enough to entertain myself and am probably actually a better improviser on piano now than I was on trumpet.   But I really miss playing with a group.   As the kids are now older I'm hoping to pick the trumpet up again and find a place to play.

The one thing I still am doing 30 years after I started in playing soccer once a week in a low-key recreational league (if you can call a league in which I suffered the only broken bones in my life low-key!).   I'm slowing down a bit, with the average player age probably 15-20 years younger than me, and I never had great skill, but it's still the thing I look forward to most each weekend (except when Villa are in winning form).

TL/DR:   I swear my life used to be exciting but I'm now old and boring and have little fun.

 

[Chindie]

Latest finished Gundam model. It's alright. Not a design I love but a decent kit to build. Was a nightmare to paint, I'm not especially happy with the paint chipping or the wash, but I think overall it looks decent.

[GarethRDR]

On 01/03/2019 at 20:09, Xela said:

Having a harem of Japanese ladies dressed as schoolgirls in your room for 3 weeks doesn't come cheap! 

It's even more expensive the other way round.