I have two main categories, pleasant distractions, and screaming at the gods.
Pleasant distractions are things I enjoy in my free time like video games, reading, juggling, lock picking.
Screaming at the gods are things I do because I need something so physical and dangerous that it requires 100% of my focus. Skateboarding, snowboarding, long distance motorcycle trips. These are things I do to get work and other stresses out of my head for a time, as I can’t afford to have my attention split.
I like those two categories and how you take up both, a lot
Gardening. And … yes!
I get up in the morning and the first thing on my mind is to go out and tend to the various veggies. The beans are flowering and the tomatoes are ripening and the herbs keep on herbing. Gonna pull out more potatoes in a week or so. Some rodent got to some of the lettuce recently, but not all of it. The fruit trees are having some trouble because they didn’t get enough nutrients for a while, but they’re getting better now and having new growth.
There’s always stuff to do. The kitchen compost turns into healthy soil for the plants. A neighbor shares fruits they’ve been growing; I hope to give them a big pile of tomatoes in return in a few weeks. It’s all good.
Sorry about your lettuce. Do you have a problem with rabbits and tomatoes? Every time I’ve tried to grow tomatoes they end up with one bite out of each one on the day they ripen.
I haven’t seen any rabbits near here. We’ve got squirrels and occasional rats. Someone in the neighborhood feeds cooked peanuts (in the shell) to the squirrels, and they bury them in the garden where they become worm food.
I like to just browse Wikipedia. It’s an endless wealth of knowledge that never ceases to impress me. It’s like the modern library of Alexandria.
I also make cocktails for fun, target shoot, fish, ride trails (not trials), make pens, collect knives, play skyrim, and i cook too.
I bounce between what i focus on often.
Over the pandemic I picked up a hobby of digging really deep into the history of the Bible.
It’s so much more interesting than I would have ever thought, and so opposite what everyone (on both sides of the topic) tends to think.
An early history of powerful women peeking through a patriarchal rewrite.
A likely foreign introduction of an Exodus tale from the sea peoples.
A famine story turned into a flood from Babylonian influence.
A generic ‘adversary’ term (‘Satan’) during conversion from a polytheistic story to monotheism leading to the most extensive fanfiction in history.
A version of Jesus referring to contemporary ideas around evolution and atomism in Leucretius being declared false heresy by the group that goes on to be canonized.
Yet again empowered women having their history rewritten by patriarchal opposition.
For someone who has always enjoyed solving little puzzles, it’s been a gift that keeps on giving.
I’ve watched a couple videos from Esoterica. His videos are wild. Who could have expected that the biblical God came from a storm-warrior god?
Sort of. One of the things I see as a common mistake in analyzing the Bible is the attempt to harmonize the different books of the Bible into a single picture of the origin and nature of a figure in it.
So yes, the storm god that shows up in Job is almost certainly coming from the ANE storm god stories which had that god defending a sea monster.
But that isn’t necessarily where ‘Yahweh’ was originating, as much as perhaps a later syncretism with local mythos.
And ultimately, I’d argue for a case that the significance of Yahweh was mostly as consort, potentially mirroring the Shasu (the only bronze age association with Yahweh) having had a real world political marriage to a high priestess of the Queen of Heaven, which was typically Yahweh’s wife in early archeology and was elsewhere in the ANE married to the storm god who slayed the sea beast.
That marriage is later overwritten and regarded as a corruption of an earlier monotheistic tradition, but such monotheism is anachronistic for that earlier period when it is archeologically evidenced as widely polytheistic.
So while I do think it’s helpful with videos like that broadening people’s horizons from what they might hear by modern believers in the texts, the actual picture is potentially far more complicated than a direct transmission of ANE parallels.
Even a story like Noah’s Ark, which fits with a storm god, appears to be a later incorporation of Babylonian flood mythos on top of an earlier Noah story as the hero of a famine story, not a flood story (Idan Dershowitz has a compelling paper on this).
I would like to do this. I checked out audio recordings from a priest about apocalypse stories as a genre and the use of numbers in the Bible, and I’ve looked at Bible as Literature classes but never signed up. Did you follow a course or study guide?
I am not in the tech field but I love coding and learning new languages. I have for the last 25 years. When my actual (blue collar) profession starts feeling drab or boring my mind naturally starts drifting to find some problem to solve or some way of automating things just to keep me happy and engaged.
Batch scripts on MS/DOS, my first (floppy disk installed) Slackware box. REXX in OS/2. I worked through the animal books and played with Java, Perl, C - actually building tools that work and accomplish things.
Diving in to a new language or project is like discovering a new author you didn’t know about and the hours of joy it will bring me are fantastic and fulfilling. I guess you could say my hobby is learning.
I wrote a great iOS app to help me with things in my job and I use it all the time which saves me literally hours, making my work happier and more profitable. Best hobby ever and totally cheap too!
I’ve gotten into gaslands, which is a tabletop game you play with modified hot wheels cars.
I like taking things apart, putting them back together, and generally working with my hands so taking apart a bunch of little cars and gluing spikey bits and rocket launchers and stuff to them is up my alley.
And because it’s a post apocalyptic setting, it doesn’t really matter how good you are at painting and such, dirty, dinged up, messy, etc. is a totally valid aesthetic. That’s kind of what you’d expect from some wastelanders slapping weapons onto whatever car they can get their hands on.
I build loudspeakers, both home and car. But, mostly car subwoofers, amplifiers, head units etc. But also home speakers for home theaters.
I absolutely love it. Music is a big passion of mine (despite never learning to play an instrument). I love it because every project has so many challenges. I love electrical work and designing a system from scratch and then getting to see it actually work iis awesome. It’s like little engineering challenges all throughout. Very engaging for me.
There’s also a lot of wood working involved. Making a functional piece of furniture and getting to expirement with different techniques is a lot of fun.
How would someone start learning on this path? I tried to get on this by myself but all the online articles I could find were directed at people with electrical experience, and to someone like me electricity is still magic.
The best beginner guide I’ve found is bcae1. It’s just some dudes blog, but he made it up as a basic electronics lesson plan with a focus on car audio. It’ll help you to get a really good idea of how everything works together. I still regularly use the site as reference.
On YouTube, there’s a channel called Car Audio Fabrication . He explains alot of stuff very well and will give suggestions on what equipment to buy. He puts a lot of focus on making a build look clean and professional.
For home stuff, parts express is the defacto DIY audio store. They have a lot of resources on their site from blog posts, how to guides, and even customer projects.
Crutchfield is easily one of the best sources for both home and car. Excellent customer support, virtually unbeatable. Lots of resources like parts express (maybe more). They do tend to carry more mainstream products. Which is fine. It’s all quality products, but I do find that you’re often paying more for Crutchfield. Both because a lot of their products carry name weight and are more expensive because of that, and because their customer support is good enough to warrant a little extra.
For car stuff, since I do competition grade builds, I like sounds solutions audio and Down 4 Sound. D4S’ owner is very active on YouTube and Instagram.
Well, that’s a lot of good places to start. Electricity is magic. Don’t fool yourself into thinking it’s not. Even after you “understand” it, it’s still magic. The last link up give you is for Sparkfun. They’re a retailer like parts express and Crutchfield with excellent guides/resources and community showcases. They’re focus is on low voltage electronics like arduino and raspberry pi.
Anyway, have fun learning. If you have questions, feel free to DM me. I love talking about this stuff.
My dad used to do this as a side hustle. It’s how I learned to solder.
Video game and weightlifting.
Video games are really fun for me, but weightlifting is like an addiction I can’t break. I rarely want to work out but if I don’t, then I end up feeling worse, and right after I do workout, it feels amazing.
Weightlifting -> Fun, health and strength Hiking -> fun, health, take a break from the noise in the world Reading -> fun, entertainment, helps to develop the mind Gaming -> just for fun Music -> kinda like a safe place (I’m kinda an audiophile, but a reasonable lol)
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Videogames, but specifically Rainbow Six: Siege. I and my stack are really really good. Not pros, but I play with some guys that could pretty viably go pro with the right support structure around them, and frankly, they consider me to be a large pillar for that support structure.
There’s no other game like it. The instant decision making, the endless possibilities and ways a round plays out. The absurd skill gap between someone good at just one aspect of the game and someone new. The tons of different aspects of the game you CAN be good at. It’s endlessly satisfying.
I act as a Flex-IGL for my stack. Basically, I tell them what to do, and pick whatever we need to make that a success. Some of them main Thermite, some pick good guns, I go for support or intel or vertical or secondary hard breach, or second entry depending on the needs of the round. We get into game and I make calls about the setup we’re attacking into and how we’re going to take a round. They play around that. I call for specific support, they rotate to make it happen. “One in Logistics, Jackal open the hatch, Sledge open Logistics-Construction wall, I’ll cut off the exit” and they just trust my calls and do it. Nothing in that game is anywhere near as satisfying as seeing my own attack plans pan out into a strong, attack sided win for us. On defense, I call site rotation and setups, if we want to do standard or weird shit we pulled from others or came up with ourselves. I play cameras to make sure everyone has all the info they need, and sit myself in the linchpin position for a defense win. My mechanics aren’t all that amazing, but guys who would be described as absolute gunners “if he sees you you’re gonna die” don’t just play with me but actively WANT to play with me because I turn their lethality into a true tool used to pry victory from any team we come up against
You sir just explained being a non commissioned officer.
Electronics and basically anything that involves electricity, i just love to find out how broken stuff works and fixing it, or just making stubborn equipment do what it’s supposed to do; so yeah basically some people do crosswords, i make 1 working tv from 2 broken ones :-)
Video games
I like different video games for different reasons, but good gameplay is key. I enjoy some games because they’re high octane, stressful, fast, engaging. But I also enjoy some games where basically nothing happens for long stretches. I loved walking around an empty world in Death Stranding listening to nice music just as much as I enjoyed brutally murdering demons to ardjent metal in Doom 2016.
Scale modeling, and miniature painting
I like making cool stuff. There really isn’t much more to it. I have a little knack for it, and the patience to do it, and I enjoy the process. I do display my work but don’t use it for anything, or come back to admire it. I just like making stuff, and this hobby is my outlet for creativity.
House plants
I used to be a bit more into this than I am now, but I still have about 30 houseplants, most of which are small. I liked getting the cool decorative stuff, and I like the color green. I grew fancy chilies a few times because I liked the reward of getting something out of my time and work. It’s not a super high-effort hobby, and I can recommend it for people with not a lot of time on their hand. You can just grow stuff in pots and buckets. Just make sure to get stuff you have time for, and don’t take it too harsh when something dies.
The core of my hobbies is learning how something is made or done. I learned to bake bread and sourdough by making tons of loaves. I learned to make my own beer. 3d printing is my peek into manufacturing industrially even though its a mere taste. I do meal prep to understand packaging and distribution.
I wouldn’t say it’s fun, most of the time, but it is incredibly satisfying and fulfilling.
How? Why? What? Never stop asking.
Gaming - everyone here has pretty much said what could be said about this one. I always liked doing things, so i find it more fun than movies
MMA - I like to punch and grab. that’s it. it’s just kinda fun for the sake of it. I recommend it if anyone is looking for a cool hobby to get active with
blender grease pencil - if they made a sequel to drawing it would be the grease pencil in blender. it can completely blur the lines between 2d, 3d, and polygonal models. I ain’t good at it yet, but i like to think one day I’ll use it to animate something pretty neato
I sew. Specifically, I love sewing stuffed animals.
As a kid, I always wanted those giant stuffed animals, but it just wasn’t meant to be. Now I can make pretty much whatever I want!
I love the colors, the feel of the fabrics… but my favorite part is seeing my 2D drawings get turning into a tangible 3D object! Plus, it makes kids go “WHOOOOAAA” or smile or laugh when they see what I make. That really can’t be beat!
