Olio CafeWhat hobby do you feel is leaving you?
FyrnyxFor me right now, it’s books followed shortly of watching things. And I mean watching things that isn’t YouTube. Recently, I’ve been donating totes of books, books I’ve spent a long time having thrifted for and waited to get without having to cave to spending online.
And those books just sat there for months and months without being picked up to be read. Even books I wanted! I used to have a 5-shelf bookcase filled with books, another 3 shelf filled with books, a structure compromising of a shoe shelf and TV-stand filled with books. Now after donating things, I am only down to a single three-shelf bookcase just packed up with what books I have decided to remain with me.
As for watching things, I’ve discarded over 120+ DVDs from my collection, I still have a hefty amount, like I have nearly 5 full disc books filled with discs of a wide variety of movies and shows to watch should I ever not be online or want time off from being online. All just continue to sit there unwatched as I just keep watching YouTube video after YouTube video.
I just think I am coming around to the acceptance that I just will not give myself time to these hobbies and that they’re probably dying out, I predict that if I don’t do anything in the next couple years should they all sit and gather more dust, I’ll just let them all go.
Electronics. Components are getting harder to get (internet orders makes hem expensive) and my eyes are no longer that good when soldering (even with glasses)
Programming. I don’t like where it’s heading and I don’t like the culture
I used to be a software engineer, but moved into infrastructure instead, so I haven’t really been programming much for few years. But all the vibe coding I see around me is making me yearn for coding the old-school way. And I’ve been searching a bit for something to apply that drive to…
The culture is gross.
Unfortunately, the types of video games I can play has been severely limited in the past several years by muscle disease. I have tried to adapt with low-APM turn-based games like Slay the Spire, Into the Breach and chess. While I have developed a certain fondness for these games, they were never my first choice.
The recent release of Silksong has been especially hard on me because its predecessor was one of my favorites. I haven’t been able to bring myself to watch a play-through of it yet.
Super duper looking forward to Mewgenics, though! Only 4 months to go.
The new Final Fantasy Tactics Remaster is really good if you haven’t played it yet.
One of the best games ever made imo
Thanks for the suggestion. I forgot that came out recently and I never did play the original or the PSP remake. I hear lots of good things about it.
So good… The remaster includes the full original game as well
Have you tried Balatro? If you like Slay the Spite there’s a good chance you will enjoy it.
Definitely. Love that game. If it’s turn-based and even remotely popular there’s a very good chance I’ve played it.
Nice. Got any suggestions?
Also a very different kind of game but have you played citizen sleeper?
Never heard of it. Looks pretty interesting.
Lately I’ve really been enjoying Shogun Showdown. I made a post recently outlining a bunch of the games I like. I can vouch for all of those. Make sure to check out the rest of the thread too. I avoided repeating what others said.
Thank you!
strongly recommend just cheating the shit out of silksong on PC. download a trainer and turn down damage taken during combat + make yourself invincible for platforming challenges.
Honestly, ALL of them. I used to make beer. Used to have one batch fermenting while another was carbonating, but it’s been years since I even thought about getting all that stuff out. I really don’t drink much anymore, so that may be part of it. I also have a closet full of board games, but just getting the pieces out and setting up the board just feels like it isn’t worth all that effort.
I’ve slowed down brewing beer too. I travel for work more and get to try more small breweries all over the place. But I’m still glad I have the home brewing behind me, I know way more about styles, ingredients, processes than I would otherwise.
I’ve been thinking about how to make the tasting more of a hobby. Like keeping a notebook with descriptions of beers I’ve tried and what made me pick up a particular brew. There are apps for logging beers but I’m not looking for that, it’s too gamified. I don’t want digital badges for drinking beer!
Recognize the beer part. Otherwise, drop one hobby, then one or two new ones surface.
Sounds like depression.
I don’t doubt it.
I got into brewing in the early 2000s and loved it. Made some great recipes and always had a good selection of beer on hand. Then microbreweries started popping up everywhere, it was great .. until I realized that I could buy a keg from a local brewery cheaper than I could brew it. And I didn’t have to do all the cleaning.
No regrets. I still have the skill and equipment, so if I want or need to brew my own I can, and it gives me time to pursue other hobbies.
It was never about the money (for me at least) It’s enjoying something you made yourself and enjoying making it.
That’s why I do all my home renovations/reconstructions/improvements myself. It takes much more time but it’s done how I want it and I can modify the plans underway without implications. Not having to wait 6+++ months for a contractor and the lower price are nice, but that’s nothing compared to the feeling and pride of having built it yourself. That feeling lasts many, many years.
I used to get so much enjoyment out of video games. I could play for entire weekends. Now I sit down and play for an hour or so and start to get bored.
This is only the first stage.
Next you’ll stop gaming completely, but still enjoy watching others play.
Then even watching gets annoying. That’s where I am now. I don’t know what’s next.
Next stage is some amount of time away from video games.
The stage after that is nostalgia: someone will mention one of the games you loved back in the day and you’ll think “That was when I was happiest. I should find out how to play that again.”
Then you’ll find some way to play it, whether by cobbling together some emulation software or buying some As Seen on TV handheld game that includes your game and a hundred others.
You’ll scratch a little bit of the itch, but decide to start checking out the current video game scene.
Once you realize everything now is too flashy and fast and annoying or it has some dreaded multiplayer requirement that you no longer have enough friends to fulfill and the public rooms of the game are filled with a bunch of children.
Eventually, you’ll stumble into the future’s version of Stardew Valley and be content just building quiet little worlds by yourself.
I have been playing the same games for the past decade. Minecraft, Animal Crossing New Leaf and a bit of Cities Skylines and KSP sprinkled in there
Speak for yourself.
When adults get bored of gaming, it’s because they end up doing other things in their lives completely unrelated to it.
That’s definitely me as well. I thought my tastes in games were changing, since I wasn’t enjoying the types of games I usually did, but I eventually concluded that I was just bored of gaming in general. It feels weird, since gaming has been my main hobby since forever and I still keep up with gaming news. I’ve since taken up a new hobby (Gunpla) that’s been scratching an itch I didn’t realize I’ve had for quite some time. My wallet hates me though.
Video games, but not because I want to. I have so much on my plate right now that could make my life better. I need to exercise more. I used to run and lift. I need to spend time with my hands-on craft hobby. I need to bake more. I enjoy video games SOOOOO much but I feel my life would probably be better without them.
If you enjoy them that much, then wouldn’t they be enriching your life not making it worse?
Seems like maybe you need to be easier on yourself.
I get told I am too harsh on myself a lot. Sigh.
It’s complicated. It’s the difference between fun and happiness. Video games are fun and a little bit of fun can contribute to happiness. However, I am also unhappy because the time I’ve spent on video games isn’t really long term.
It’s like eating healthy food which will make you feel better overall VS having a little treat. That ice cream I had isn’t really helping me except get fat. That apple I ate is gonna make me live better and longer.
However, a life without treats… Is that a life worth living?
All hobbies that don’t involve a screen. I’ve been having serious mobility issues, where standing for more than a few minutes is painful and I leave the house only in my wheelchair. It makes going to restaurants, concerts and events difficult. Makes going on hikes impossible or even existing in parks more painful than pleasurable.
Appreciate your legs y’all. :(
Motorcycling. I live in a dense urban area and the traffic here is nightmarish. It takes me like 2+ hours to reach good riding roads, and that’s more time than I’m willing to invest these days. I’ll still use it for short city errands but I’ve noticed a drastic drop off compared to say five years ago.
Maybe consider a bicycle? Similar enjoyment but better suited to dense cities because you’re allowed to go on multi-use paths and other places motorcycles aren’t.
I do bike, but it’s not one of my passions. Very different experience than a motorbike :)
As a kid I had a friend who modified his bike to make motorbike sounds, could this provide the experience you are looking for?
🤣
Appreciate the thought but I don’t think so. The cornering and getting s knee down are the things I miss most.
Same here, but for different reasons. I used to need to commute a lot, which is a lot more fun (and much quicker) on a motorcycle. When the kids were born, I wanted to find a job closer to home. Now I live a 10 minute bicycle ride from the office.
The kids have grown up now, but my motorcycle has worn out and I have not bothered to replace it.
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 posted on another thread about this a while back. Oddly, I have a weird mental block that stopped me gaming when I was 16 back in the 90s.
Basically, being a nerd in small-town rural Scotland was not something to be proud of after a certain age, and gaming was social kryptonite, so being an insecure teen I focused my energies on bands and drinking.
This was great for a while, but looking back, it would appear that I completely missed out on the Golden Age of gaming, and now it’s me who is the odd one out at work, having never played anything beyond a sneaky stab at Portal.
I’m now 48 and in two minds about it. On one hand, some of the guys at work have failed to launch and live physically isolated lives and spend all their time gaming. On the other, I see my own kids laughing their asses off playing Fortnite with their friends, and they are clearly having the best time.
I did try playing with them briefly, but they’re already leaving me for dust. So yeah, my plan is to maybe low-key get into gaming again when I retire in like 17 years’ time. We shall see.
You’re the sexond 48yo Scotsman I saw in 2 minutes here in Lemmy. You have alt accounts? I don’t mind, just thought it a funny coincidence
I did have another account on another instance a few weeks back, but it kept going down so I created this one on lemmy.world. I had the same username without the 2 on the end, so it could be that. Can you recall the username?
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.
Gaming has left me with this always connected, forced multiplayer so there’s some fucking reason to justify the need bullshit. Diablo 4 is fucking garbage because of the need for engagement, ladders, endgame content, and I fucking hate it.
Just give me games I can obsess over for a month and beat and be done. And I probably still will replay it fifty times over the next decade because there’s nothing as good anyway (Hi, Baldur’s Gate and Skyrim).
I find myself flooded with new releases I don’t care about, but then go and spend 2 months playing through all of mass effect instead
Dancing and Theatre. I used to love doing improv and dancing Salsa. Now I can’t find the time and energy.
Ok I wrote a response but I was never into dancing but they had free swing stuff that I would go to occasionally. Never got that good but it was a fun thing to do once in awhile. I also have been in various choruses and choirs and they are really fun but also really sorta exhausting. Anyway your response made me add two things to my list.
Yeah, same when it comes to reading. All of my other hobbies involve making things, and I don’t ever dedicate time for reading anymore. I don’t have time for any other hobbies anyways right now.
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
Aw me too :( coming to terms with the same feeling I think ♥️ glad you found something cool to do in its place.
Thanks for this 😊 It certainly wasn’t easy to let the muse go, here’s hoping you will manage it smoothly - or better, find a way to keep the flame going ❣️
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?
How long back do you want to go
The piano. I used to play almost everyday and I got pretty good at it but I rarely play it now. Just yesterday was the first time I played it in a couple years
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’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.
+1 for the e-reader. As someone who consistently has three or four books in progress at the same time, an e-reader is how I manage to actually read. I tend to pick my reading based on a whim or mood at the time. If I’m leaving for work, I won’t know how I’ll feel once I have time to read. Instead of lugging all four books with me, I’ll tend to bring none. Which means I don’t end up reading throughout the day.
But with an e-reader, that situation is entirely flipped on its head. Don’t know what I’ll want to read? It doesn’t matter, because my entire library is on the kobo. My only limitation now is comics, because .cbz files tend to take up a lot more space than .epub files do. So I’ll consistently have my entire library, and also a few comics. But even the comics problem is largely solved, because I host my own Komga server, which my kobo can connect to and download new comics.
Satellite and space tracking. Satnogs with some custom hardware.
I’ve done it for a number of years, helping citizen scientists all over the world. But because of the cuts and less and less people getting into the hobby, its been hard to keep being motivated.
Took down the setup a bit ago for some repairs and haven’t put it back. Probably won’t.
After a lifetime of reading comic books, and amassing a pretty large collection, i just… stopped. It wasn’t so much losing interest as I’d gotten what I needed from them. I just don’t need them anymore. Now I’m left with 50 some boxes of comics to get rid of…
Im not sure how much I miss it as I to am a recovering comic book collector. If you have anything from the powerline series (powerline, doctor zero, saint george, or critical mass) from way back and are near chicago and care to exchange let me know.
I had one or two of critical mass at some point. I had to look it up, but I remember some of those covers
Damn, 50 boxes is a LOT. I thought I had too many to get rid of… I think I have around 24 that I have to offload.
I do not envy you at all.
Yeah. And I was never a collector so much as an accumulator (preservationist, if we’re being generous). It’s all just stuff that I read.
At the very least, you could be sitting on some issues that collectors could pay a pretty penny for. I would be hesitant on giving your comics to those used games store that have just turned into these like ’nerd-caves’ where they mark up nearly everything you give them.
If you know of any comic stores or so, those could be a route too.
I’m resolute on not selling to any sort of store. I’ll get 25¢ per comic at most. And then, yeah, they’ll sell at much more of a markup.
I have ADHD. I’ve forgotten more hobbies than most people have heard of.
Gaming.
I’m just shit at it now. I used to love FPS games, now I can barely hit anyone let alone get any kills.
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)
I’ve started bringing a book, (or bookmarking a wedpage with the book) and reading in waiting rooms.
It’s not much, but it’s nice to grab a book instead of my phone. Small changes
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.
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.
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.
I fail to see how you are the product by playing a competitive game, do you think game companies make money by data harvesting?
This probably wasn’t the thread for you then.
Cooking.
I love to cook but my wife hates my food.
She hates food? Aw man.
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.
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.
Art. I used to do all kinds of art. Now mostly I do music instead.
I two primary hobbies are music and basketball. I’m still making music and not intending to stop anytime soon. But I don’t think my body can do basketball anymore, especially when I go for pick up games and everyone is younger, faster, and stronger than me. Not to mention people are competitive and I don’t fit in as someone who just wants to play casually for exercise.
I’ve been trying to find a steady group of people to play with who are looking for the same thing, but have been unsuccessful so far. I might have to hang it up pretty soon.
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.
Ironically, MMOs that do cater to the busy adult life end up being the worst to actually sit down and play since they have auto battle, auto pathing, auto questing.
It just becomes an idle game with extra steps.
actually thats the type I like. I don’t want to play a game as much as play with dolls and hang out.
Probably playing video games at the moment. I just dont really have time for them right now, especially given how addictive they can be.
You should use an app like Topaz AI to upscale all your old dvds and watch shows in HD. I’ve recovered so many old series, like ALF, that will never be released in HD, now very watchable at 4x using the Iris2 upscaler.m settings and some parameter adjustments.
*I’m in no way affiliated with Topaz, only a user of the app from early days in 2020/2021.
New hobby for me!
It’s a fun one, but I desperately wish there was a way to run it without needing a VM or something. It’s all just windows or mac based, but they do have the best models
What’s wrong with VMs?
Videogames
Life, each day I feel it’s less of it.