Ask Lemmy

I have ADHD. I've forgotten more hobbies than most people have heard of.

Gaming.

I used to play every day with my best friend for 30 years until one day he threw me under a bus, so to speak, cut off all contact and I don't even know why

I have an awesome wife now with whom I spend every second and I don't really have any time left to play games

I used to be involved in my local Warhammer/Wargaming scene. Like full bore painting, modeling, 3d printing, doing tournaments, having a bi-weekly club. Unfortunately I fell on hard times and then my baby brother had a baby. So had to sell most of my stuff. We live together that's why. Can't have resin printers around a newborn. That's a super hard no. I kept the paint because I used oils instead of acrylics, but that never turned into canvas painting. I sold all my armies across like 7 different game systems. The only games I have left are Infinity and trading card games. It's all just sitting in boxes in the attic right now.

I don't know if I'll get back to doing any of it any time soon. I got to get a job and a car. I wanna move to a new city, but unfortunately that city is turning into a fucking ICE stomping ground. One of my friends in the scene recently died and at his funeral almost our whole social group showed up. Sounds like we all scattered and haven't been participating in hobby as much. Most people found other things to do.

It was a great run. About 10 years of a social life and something to do. At one point you think it's never gonna end because it's so good, but life will find a way. I hope to get back to it some day.

Most common reason to give these up seems to be lack of time. Why has our amount of time changed? We still work the same hours, get purchases delivered, have the same families even with fewer kids so we should have more not less right? What is eating into our available time? Is it social media?

Table tennis is the one I miss the most, used to play it all the time with the other kids in the building I used to live, level was quite high since we even asked for pro level stuff to our parents. Was the only sport that I actually loved and practiced every week, but everyone grew up, moved out, and the closest place that has it to me is a 1 hour drive with traffic.

I felt gaming slipping way from me for years, turned out I had killed my dopaminergic response with tiktok. About a year since quitting tiktok and I'm gaming more than ever again, AND enjoying it.

Magic the gathering is slipping as a hobby, mostly because I've been playing other games though

Books have always been rough for me, I need them to grab me instantly, cant bruteforce anymore, either way, my imagination is fried, so I swapped to comics, did junkfood reading webtoons/manhua,etc. for a bit, binged a ton of stuff, eventually wanted more, started reading comics again and this hobby has stuck for over a year, the visuals help me get into stuff I otherwise wouldn't read even if it's super wordy.

I haven't had a book phase since I started using tiktok, I blame that app. I used to binge read some high fantasy series once a year for at least a month, I miss the brain tingly feeling of stuff coming together, movies and tv shows give it rarely, some books sent electricty down my spine and I felt like I was physically on molly just rolling tits as stuff came together, like hiw ppl describe asmr, but since tiktok I just zone out instead of getting in to books, really want to read the most recent stormlight and gentleman bastards (if that releaed havent checked)

Drone flying.

There are far too many idiots out there that are downright dangerous, annoying, and ignorant. I worked on the "rescue helicopter"(HEMS) in the past and basically everyone of my former colleagues can come up with various near-misses. The rules are god damn easy,the smaller licences are easy to get and if you use a (free!) App for the tricky questions (flight areas) combined with some common sense you're good.

But people willfully don't do that.

Combine that with the massive rise in hybrid warfare drones here(Central Europe) and I have absolutely zero desire to continue with that hobby.

Funny enough it was a discussion I had here on lemmy (with another account) that was the final nail for me.

A group of posters basically refused to use a (free and GDPR compliant) flight area app as it was only available on Playstore, the web app (which is explicitly provided as an alternative) could not be used as it's source code was not provided (whut?) and therefore it's not their fault when they fly into a marked HEMS approach zone in a hospital.

Yeah. I don't want to associated with these people.

I've recently gotten back into reading as a way to wind down before bed without using the phone, and it has done wonders for my sleep. Pair it with a kobo ereader and downloading, uh, free books means there's no pressure to read books you don't enjoy (I find with physical books they tend to loom at you from the shelf and make you feel guilty for not reading, which only makes things worse).

Anyway to get to the point reading can be a very low investment hobby if you want it to be.

Music. I played piano since very young, started making tracks on 4-track and the Amiga around 10 years old, kept going deeper with the demoscene and playing in + recording bands. Went on to do a music degree, got a job making music...

Hobby became serious, then it turned into a ball and chain. I turned around, did a second degree and started working in a different field. Thought I'd keep music as a hobby, but now it presents a different face: no point in making tracks if nobody but me ever listens, nor is there point in producing other people for free with all the invested time most likely never being too fruitful.

I did find a new hobby though. Working out is the antithesis to working on art projects. Put an hour in, get an hour's worth of gains back. Love it :D

Tbh, most of my old hobbies I thought I had lost interest in came flooding back once I started running and exercising and eating better. It's actually been months now since I last worked out. I'm in the process of writing a story, and I love it. So....none, with a new one.

Nothing, really. I've spent most of my life focusing on what matters to me, and so as time goes on I just get more dedicated to the things I already like.

I don't play competitive online games any more. They are a waste of time and exist to reward whoever puts the most amount of time into them. It's a race to the bottom to see who's the biggest loser.

I still play games though, just ones where I'm not the product.

Comics.

I collected when I was a kid for a few years. That was probably 1990-1993. Lost interest after a while.

I came back to the hobby for brief periods in 2013 and 2017, picking up a few of the Bronze Age key books that I wanted when I was a lot younger. Now I was older and had the money to buy those books.

In the covid years there was a comic-boom, and I was caught up in that. There were a lot of things happening within the hobby and a lot of people making YouTube content around it.

The problem with getting too involved with comics is that they take up too much fucking space. Right now, I have around 4500 books in the collection. That number needs to come down to like 1000.

I’ve been working on a full run of the original X-Men series. I have 21 books to go until I’ve completed the 545 book run. I do still intend to obtain the remaining 21 books; but there’s no immediate plans for buying any old books that aren’t X-Men. I’ll keep those. There’s probably around 400 or so other books that I’d like to hold on to, and that’s how I’ve arrived at my 1000#. I want to get rid of pretty much 2/3 of the entire collection at this point. It just takes up too much space. I still buy new books too, but am finding it less enjoyable (relative to other options) since I’ve moved to a different state. There’s a lot more outdoors stuff for me to do in the new state, but the LCS is also a longer drive now.

Selling them is truly a major pain in the ass too. eBay has a limit of 250 free listings per month. I don’t want to exceed that, otherwise I spend $0.35 per listing, even if the (average buy it now price is $4) listing doesn’t sell. Whatnot is an alternative to eBay, but that really requires actively getting in camera and trying to sell stuff to people. That’s a huge time expense. There’s also other places like hipcomic that auction books but I have no interest in selling there. When I was more buying (rather than trying to sell) those sites always seemed to be overpriced, and so I stopped going. I imagine I’m not alone in that experience. I speculate they have low traffic, and so the juice isn’t worth the squeeze.

Wrapping up, yes… I’m falling out of this hobby but more so because I’m almost done with the original goal; but the current state of my coexistence with the beast of collecting is causing me a combination of both anxiety and resentment. The reality is that I’ll have to somehow, someway, spend a lot of time getting rid of these 3500 or so books without being totally ripped off in the process. Getting rid of them doesn’t sound fun at all. Dealing with people is annoying. I don’t enjoy haggling. I don’t enjoy taking 1000s of pictures of comics with my phone. I don’t enjoy salesmanship in any way, shape or form.

What started as a fun “chase that goal,” type hobby evolved into a “this is taking up a ton of space, and you now need to either pretend to be someone you’re not for a long time to get rid of them properly, throw them in the trash, or just get totally fucked over by selling them in bulk direct to some other reseller” type deal. No one tells you that when you get into comics.

Cooking.

I love to cook but my wife hates my food.

For me it has also been gaming. Some part of my brain is always reminding me about all the chores I have to do and all the crafting projects I could be working on instead. Also the cats keep on demanding attention every 5-10 minutes so that takes me right out of the flow if I ever manage to get into it.

Probably playing video games at the moment. I just dont really have time for them right now, especially given how addictive they can be.

I lost books sometime in the aughts. I miss them but its just to easy to do other things. MMO's are another. That is sorta the reverse in that they suck up to much time and there are personal reasons I needed to drop them. Going to cons also fell out about the same time as reading and its fun to hang with fen folk. Ill say along with cons just any in person nerd thing. free thought groups, makerspaces. they are all sorta part of the same thing I think which is essentially just hanging with nerds and geeks.

Art. I used to do all kinds of art. Now mostly I do music instead.