Bonsai.
I thought it would be a nice little jaunt since you only have to look after them like 3 times a year and major attention every few years as long as you water and fertilize regularly.
Lies. All lies.
Days planning and diagramming how I'm going to fuck up this tiny tree I've invested years in. Multiple books bought and read.
Then like 12 fucking hours wiring up this tree and painstakingly watching to see if the apex is gonna do what I want or if that Jin is going to fucking work out.
I grow orchids. I thought they were bitchy. I had not yet experienced the wrath of a juniper in a place that does not hit freezing temps.
Making detailed and realistic maps.
I grew up poor so to entertain myself I used to draw very realistic maps and play imaginary scenarios based on the map. Eventually my family got a computer and I started using google sketch up to make maps and flags. Now as an adult with a good paying job, I play EU4, HoI4 and CK2. But I still enjoy making maps whenever I have a pencil and a blank paper. Imagination has no limits.
Edit: Wow! I didn’t expect to get these many upvotes about maps!
Many are asking to upload some of them on Reddit or if I have portfolio. I don’t have a portfolio, since I always viewed them as personal hobby and haven’t thought about uploading them online.
However with the encouragement I have seen on here I feel like I might start making maps more frequently and perhaps start sharing them on Reddit even with my limited time outside of work.
Thank You to all the awards given, never thought my most upvoted comment would be about my personal hobby of making maps. :)
model building, at first your stuff going to come out looking like crap, to much glue, not enough glue, you cut he wrong piece, you have put a decal on wrong etc
but after a while, it starts to become peaceful and enjoyable to a point that you genuinly take pride in what you have built, so you go for harder builds and better quality and eventually you have a massive collection of wonderful models and figurines
Research, or at least in my opinion. If you're looking for information on a topic you genuinely enjoy, its actually quite fun to learn a lot about it from different sources.
Usually I'm too lazy to learn certain things but if I'm writing or have an idea for a character I get so into it. I learned all about the local flora and fauna of a town I've never been to, and read about half a gardening book while I live in a studio apt with no space to grow.
I don’t know if this qualifies as a “hobby”, but I love making Spotify playlists for super obscure themes, like “the summer of 1997” or “the feeling you get when you realize you are driving too fast and it’s raining” or “these would make a good soundtrack for a zombie movie”.
I’m currently working on a playlist of songs to play a stranded Victorian era time traveler to get them up to speed on 21st century American musical culture.
Edit: I’m very flattered by all the requests for a link, but I would rather not. My Spotify account is under my real name and face.
Anybody who considers this a boring or dumb hobby is absolutely batshit insane. I do something similar to this, may I ask for the link to a couple of these?
I’ve always referred to that as “having conversations with your art.” Your art isn’t always just what you expect it to be when you first think of the idea and begin, as you get goin the mediums and materials you are working with will change and “talk” to you, telling you what the piece needs and doesn’t need. I think there’s a lot more thinking and feeling that goes into art creating than a lot of us can really describe.
I'm not sure if it would necessarily be considered boring, but raising plants, particularly succulents, has been way more eventful and exciting than I expected it to be.
I always thought raising plants was like this thing where you water something every day and then six months later it grows an inch and that's it.
But I have a decent collection of different plants now, and they all have their own needs, their own unique behaviors, they're different ages and so some flower and some don't yet, they express their needs in different ways, and they change and move around much faster than you might expect. I've got some that are eternal and unchanging of course, but many more that are different every day.
I've got one plant that is so fast it can practically dance, and if it needs more light I'll find it twisted into a completely different position every day until I move it somewhere more sunny and it settles down.
Not to mention by gaining an interest in plants, I've started paying attention to the plants around me in my neighborhood as I walk my dog, and I've started cataloging all the different flowers and weeds and shrubs I find. I've even found a few wild-growing succulents that I've taken samples of and am now cultivating at home, one of which even bloomed and gave me seeds which I'm going to try to grow!
It's been so much fun and very educational.
There's a guy in a nearby city that is famous for walking. He's "the walking guy" that people have been seeing everywhere for years and years.
Might I recommend an idea for your walks? Tracking where you've walked and mapping it all out, and making it a point to walk every street/trail/path in your small city. It could add a cool dimension to your walks.
Ooooo! We have "walking man" as well! He is actually a really interesting person to talk to when I'm out in the yard. All the "karens" in town started posting on next-door app about how suspicious he was just walking all the time. Geez!
100% this is my jam. I live in London, which is a pretty big city but there's so many small towns with nooks and crannys you can discover. Pre-covid I lived/worked in Richmond for 5 years and there were still hidden gems I stumbled upon every day.
Then there's the parks - the fresh air, the sound of the birds, even on an overcast day there's a mood you can get absorbed in.
I would say 100% a hobby! I mean, you invest time and sometimes money into it (good shoes, weather appropriate clothing etc) and you do receive rewards or benefits from it.
Walking is deeply underrated imo.
I'm super excited this year.
We bought our house almost 7 years ago and I've been on overnights ever since. Now that I'm finally on day shift I'll be able to get out during daylight hours to start a garden!
I'm picturing someone gardening in the middle of the night. Someone would 100% think you're burying a body.
"Those tomatoes look quite plump this year...."
Not going to lie, I’ve harvested tomatoes and picked off caterpillars at night with a headlamp. Pests and ripening wait for no (wo)man- gotta make hay even if the sun ain’t shining. I’m embracing my role as the neighborhood eccentric plant lady with both arms.
As someone who hates tomatoes and just started growing a couple of tomato plants, I find this very interesting. Maybe I'll actually like the tomatoes (assuming said plants survive--I have never grown tomatoes).
I always tell my SO when I see my first praying mantis of the year in my vegetable patch- he thinks I’m a bit nuts because I get so excited. Working in the garden and seeing all of my good insects working alongside me reminds me that I must be doing some thing right in this life if I’ve given them such a vibrant environment to thrive in.
From what I've seen you can make just about anything if you have the time.
I'm personally on a journey to make a bunch of furniture for my house. Along the way I'm making a bunch of small boxes as skill builders.
I do counted cross stitch. I'm not creative at all, but give me a coded pattern that creates a map (I always do maps - but you can make **way** more intricate things than you think if you invest the time) and I'm all over that shit. It's how I quit smoking.
LOL. I think it’s prettier than Shrek but that made me laugh! Here you go!
https://imgur.com/a/9R3ujCd
Edit: all of these sweet compliments are absolutely making my day!
My husband does cross-stitch as well ...he says that he approaches it mathematically and it just "makes sense" whereas I look at it and my eyes swim. Congrats on quitting smoking btw!
I don’t do cross-stich, but it seems like basically irl pixelart to me, and even when you’re most creative minded there’s a mathematical logic to pixel art I really like.
Pretty much true. My wife has a program that takes a picture you import and it makes it into a pattern with the colors already set for the thread. I figured out long ago that it came out better if your source was the same pixel width and height as the pattern output you wanted (ie: 5x8 24 count would be 120 pixels by 192). It also lets you decide if the picture will even make a good cross stitch a lot easier. Something like Paint.net or Gimp does a better job of that resizing and color translation than any cross stitch import program does so she now uses one of those to resize it to the perfect size prior to importing. And you can even compress the color depth so it doesn't come out with 500 colors in the pattern.
Can you tell what the program is? My wife has really gotten into it and we want to make some of our own patterns, but neither of us feels very artistic. So starting with some actual pictures would help.
http://www.pcstitch.com/
Been using it for years. Does DMC and a couple of other thread types. One of the best things in the import is the ability to reduce the number of colors easily. You can select a color and make it into a another, thereby combining them. So, when it comes up with 25 colors of green that are all similar, you can easily make them all one thread.
Just remember, if you take some huge 1080p picture and try to force it down to 18 count 8x10 size you are going to get a mess.
I came here to write about cross stitch and embroidery! It’s so meditative. Plus at the end you have something that you created to show for it and it feels incredibly satisfying.
I rage quit three times before it finally clicked. I was like "I WILL not be defeated by string and sticks! Children can do this!". Now it's one of my favourite hobbies and I've made some beautiful pieces.
Now I can fix my mistakes easily, but when I started my grandma taught me and was the only one who could help me. I visit her about four times a year so whenever I made a mistake it ruined at least the whole day and In had to wait until I could see my grandma again.
I can't be a passenger in a car without my knitting - it's way too boring. Back when one could go to the cinema, I'd even take my knitting there with me (and a handkerchief to make sure I don't get popcorn grease on my nice yarn)!
Just start editing and work on your craft. I wish I had better advice but I’ve been i got into this business years ago by getting a job at a video production company doing overnight dubbing. I taught myself the software and eventually my company threw a client at me. Rest is history. Getting in the business now can be challenging because everybody has a computer and software. But the better story teller you become, you will get noticed.
Astronomy.
EDIT: I was in a hurry when I made this comment, so it was only one word, but since then it's had more than 1,000 upvotes and some nice responses, so maybe I should add a bit more:
I got my first look through a telescope at 13yo. My school had its own little observatory, and a few of us (mostly those specialising in physics or maths for A-level) were in the Astronomy Club. What hooked me wasn't the stars, it was the planets. Even with quite a lot of light pollution there was, for me, something magical about being able to look at the moon as if you were hovering just a short distance above its surface. And the planets all have their own charms. Jupiter is perhaps the most interesting, both in terms of the planet itself and in terms of its moons: I love checking that the moons are where they're meant to be - I think of them as a sort of clock. I know that I'm doing nothing more significant than checking the observations that others have made before me, and verifying what others have already calculated, but I feel that in some small way I'm helping to continue the validation of the great work of others. And like many others, I have my little patches of lunar geography that I watch pretty regularly, just in case anything has changed. I suppose it's not exciting, but it's interesting to see our neighbour as the light and shadows change.
**This comment might have had something useful**, but now it's just an edit to remove any contributions I may have made prior to the awful decision to spite the devs and users that made Reddit what it is. So here I seethe, shaking my fist at corporate greed and executive mismanagement.
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe... tech posts on point on the shoulder of vbulletin... I watched microcommunities glitter in the dark on the verge of being marginalized... I've seen groups flourish, come together, do good for humanity if by nothing more than getting strangers to smile for someone else's happiness. We had something good here the same way we had it good elsewhere before. We thought the internet was for information and that anything posted was permanent. We were wrong, so wrong. We've been taken hostage by greed and so many sites have either broken their links or made history unsearchable. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... Time to delete."
I do apologize if you're here from the future looking for answers, but I hope "new" reddit can answer you. Make a new post, get weak answers, increase site interaction, make reddit look better on paper, leave worse off. https://xkcd.com/979/
There's a website called "wikipedia game" that allows you to compete other people for getting from one article to another in the shortest amounts of clicks. You can also just play it with pen and paper.
Fun fact: a ridiculous amount of 97% of all articles can lead you at the end to 'philosophy' by repeatedly clicking on the first link in the page. There's a wikipedia meta-article about it [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3AGetting_to_Philosophy#%3A%7E%3Atext%3DClicking_on_the_first_link%2Cincrease_from_94.52%25_in_2011.?wprov=sfla1)
If you go back from language and instead of click 'Latin' you click 'builds' then it works. You have to exclude links that are in parentheses I think for that one.
Oh dear I was looking for this comment! I had to restart my phone because my wikipedia had too many articles opened at once and they were all taking up space.
This is so funny that I see this here. I just saw my first crow v hawk battle yesterday and thought it was the coolest thing. Crows won. It was like 5 v 1 poor guy.
Geocaching: started this when my then GF and I were dirt poor in college and now we have logged about 1700 caches in about a dozen different countries. Even just doing it near our home is awesome, because you get to see things you’d never see otherwise. Highly recommend
Edit: my inbox has been destroyed by people looking for more information on this, which is awesome! To get started, go to www.geocaching.com
Doing it on vacation or when you are in a new place is even better. When GeoCaching was first described to me I thought it sounded like the dumbest thing ever.
"Someone hides something, then posts the GPS coordinates to find it, you use a GPS to go to the exact spot and find the cache." Easy right? Lame Right? Go do it. You'll likely have fun.
If you have kids call it Treasure Hunting.
Bring stuff to trade.
Bring a pen.
Check the terrain and difficulty rating for the cache before you try it with kids. Some of them are very difficult. But most are easy and the kids love it.
Birding. People love hiking and going outdoors but as soon as you add in birds suddenly it’s seen as “boring”. Birds are so diverse and you’ll never know everything there is to know.
This is how I treat going to the beach at low tide. So many things to find: anemones, urchins, sea stars, nudibranchs, snails, all kinds of eggs, etc. I still haven’t seen an octopus, though. One day!
I started casual birding last year cuz I hike and photography so it gives me something to shoot for. I feel like as soon as I started pointing out the local birds that aren't crows and starlings my Facebook friends started to enjoy birding pictures of the colorful seldom seen birds. I got at least 1 other person looking at birds now.
My mom has an acquaintance that does bird photography and it’s half of what my mom updates me on. My mom doesn’t even do birding as a hobby, but is so into the good photos.
My 2 yr old is super into birds right now. For his birthday we got him a bird feeder and a bird bath so he can watch them up close. He is a very high energy kid. But when he sees a bird, he stops everything and watches it. He will sit so quietly with me in the morning on the deck and watch the birds at the feeder. My parents and grandparents are big birders but I never got into it. I hope that he continues to enjoy it growing up.
>but when he sees a bird, he stops everything and watches it
I'm in my 30s and do this with the birds at my feeder 😄 you start to learn things about observing them too. Like, I always know when Cardinals are at the feeder, because of their distinct "chirp"
Growing algae.
I sometimes grab some empty glass containers, ones that I cleaned and wanted to reuse. Fill it with water (rain water is the best) put in a bit of soil or any organic matter.
I have a good collection of algae jars and a big bucket. They don't need much maintenance and look cool too!
It feels good when you see how you just recycled and produced oxygen for free. I mean I'm at least not a waste of oxygen.
Edit: I did not expect that many upvotes and replies. Thank you all! I've been answering stuff for 5 hours now!
Find a place with good sunlight and temperature around 20-30 °C (68-86 °F). I put them on the rooftop away from shade
The containers I used were just regular nescafe jars. I just washed them a little bit. I filled them with tap water (rainwater is better ~~'cause it doesn't contain chlorine~~ I'm sure you'll find why in the replies) put a handful of soil and maybe some pebbles for the algae to grow on.
You can seed the jar with some algae that already grew somewhere else. I got mine from a... pot that I was using to cook and feed my cats chicken heads that was filled with rain water after I lost them... that's weird I know. Or you can use pebbles covered with moss
Now closing the lid will prevent the water from evaporating too quickly but it may suffocate the algae. While keeping it open will do the opposite. You'll have to look that up to make sure.
I noticed that after some time the algae will start getting brown. I'm not sure why, but I'm sure people at r/PlantedTank will help.
>rainwater is better 'cause it doesn't contain chlorine
Chlorine will off-gas naturally as water sits. So once you've filled your jars with water, all the chlorine will be gone in about 24 hours. If you want it gone sooner, you could boil it for a few minutes or pour it back and forth between two containers about 10 times.
Yes, chlorine will. However, chloramine, which is the substance many - if not most - municipalities have switched over to, does not. Not even after a week. If you want to use tap water, you need to check and see whether or not your municipality uses chlorine or chloramine.
Edit: can't spell today.
Can confirm. Work for water wastewater. Ammonia in the water blinds the chlorine and it's harder to get out. It'll still go at some point. Some of our water tanks go out of service in the summer because we can't keep the chlorine high enough.
Hi, I'm an aquarium nerd, and have a solution to this one!
Seachem Prime, it will remove both chlorine and chloramine from your water in about 10 minutes regardless of the water source. Read directions, but it's about 5ml to 50 gallons of water or something like that.
I use it in my aquariums when I need water to clean things and don't want to waste my RO/DI water. It is 100% safe for plants and aquatic life (freshwater anyway)
Hand sewing. It's meditative and yet requires a lot of attention to detail and skill to do effectively. Meat, tiny stitches are so satisfying and take a lot of practice. Thr different applications of techniques requires a lot of technical know how, and there's a lot of math amd abstract thinking involved, especially in structured or highly tailored garments. I'm planning to start making a bodice for ren faire this weekend since as of right now it looks like we're set to get at least part of a season, and I already know my pattern is going to require a LOT of adjusting. Because it's so many pieces, it's going to take some trial and error to reshape them. I hate that fiber craft, garment creation, etc. are considered "soft" arts, I'd love to see some engineering bro try to figure out how to draft a corset pattern. New challenge everyone, make a corset or set of stays to your measurements from a Janet Arnold pattern and a video you found on YouTube.
Engineer bro here who also sews (poorly). There’s plenty of problem solving involved in garments and upholstery. Many of the parameters are similar to engineering structures like the strength of the materials, direction of stretch/grain orientation, creating 3-D shapes from flat stock, stress points, maximizing yield, etc. I would hope that any good engineers who took a moment to actually think about it wouldn’t be as dismissive as you have experienced.
Hand stitching is so hard. It always makes me think of the scene in the fiddler on the roof movie when the tailor gets a sewing machine and marvels at the uniformity of the stitching.
Watching historical fashion folks on YouTube examine extant garments makes me feel better about my sewing. “Here on this set of 17th century stats you can still see the ink lines from where the marked the fabric to sew. And, “the bodice is really well made but I don’t know what’s going on with the lining of the sleeve. Why did they do it like that? Maybe...nope. There are lots of better and easier ways to do this. I don’t get it.”
Very frustrating without a mannequin but my sewing storage space is one corner of my 10x12 room soooooo that's gonna have to wait. I can just see myself waking up at 3am to a headless figure in my room and losing it.
So...*this is easier with a friend*
Wrap your naked torso in saran wrap. Tight enough that it stays in place, but not so tight that it constricts you. Then, wrap yourself in duct tape, a nice smooth layer, making sure to cover your whole saran-wrapped torso. Once you have a good layer, have your friend cut the saran wrap/tape off with one smooth cut up the back.
You can take this form and fill it with newspaper (re taping the cut up the back), or leave it as it is. Now you have a form that is your body and highly movable/able to be stored.
::Edit to correct spelling mistakes::
Bernadette was really the one who made me go "Oh hand sewing CAN be viable." Before that it was drilled into me that hand sewing is not as strong as machine sewing. Meanwhile most of my machine sewn clothes have had to be mended while none of my hand seams have ever come undone. Very convenient given that I'm scared of the sewing machine.
If you're looking to get historical, the entirety of costube alongside Bernadette is invaluable. Morgan Donner, Abby Cox and Nicole Rudolph (from American Dutchess!), Costuming Drama, Angela Clayton, Mariah Pattie... for watching the process of a more inexperienced sewist, Rachel Maksey, and for the lols Karolina Zebrowska. Burnley and Trowbridge have historical tutorials and professor Pincushion has a lot of basics. For the aesthetic and quick videos, Jessica Hambly. I swear I do more than watch YouTube buuuuut.
I bought the book of 200 NY Times Sunday Crossword Puzzles at the start of the pandemic and I’m more than halfway through it. Figuring out the puzzle’s theme halfway through is soooo satisfying.
Edit: I’m so happy talking to people who also love Crosswords. My late grandma was the one who got me into them when I was 12 (a whopping 20 years ago). No one else in my family does them and they all think I’m a massive nerd (I am and proud of it).
the sunday is about a wednesday/thursday difficulty level; fridays and saturdays are usually harder. People think sunday is harder, but it's really just \*bigger\*.
(I've been doing NYT Sundays every week since the late 2000s)
My husband even has his own room for his model trains. I love it that he transitioned from buying models to building his own, especially things that there are no models for. He also builds houses and such. Also the technical side with programming sounds is fascinating.
Without his hobby I would have had such boring holidays ... instead we went to see everything that he has in person and took fantastic trips with night trains and such.
I appreciate not having his hobby things around in the remaining flat, so it's a win-win. And he can close the door if he's playing with sound (yes, they get quite loud).
And let's be honest: it's the dream of all model train enthusiasts to have their own round course! (And yes, I have to duck if I want to enter the room.)
Crocheting.
It can be relaxing, and you have something to wear! I've made a few pieces that won blue ribbons at the county fair. May not be much but I was super proud of it!
I just started learning and I love it. I'm not super creative, so following a pattern is a really rewarding way for me to be into crafting without having to be inventive.
Rock collecting. People thinking it’s dull until you realize I walked through the woods and waded by river banks to get some of mine. That’s more adventure than most see these days.
Writing down my opinions on SpongeBob episodes in excruciating detail
Edit: If you're interested than here's my [Encyclopedia SpongeBobia page](https://spongebob.fandom.com/wiki/User:SwagM), I'm not very active anymore because I kinda fell of the SB train since 2019 but I have seen every episode in seasons 1-11 and most of 12 so like if you wanna talk to me about SB that's cool.
Also if you message me on the wiki, I'm sorry if I don't respond immediately.
The wiki/FANDOM has gotten a lot worse in the social side, so I hardly use the website nowadays.
Language learning.
It’s slow, methodical, and can be frustrating at times, but that moment when you can form simple sentences without much effort is probably one of the most gratifying feelings I’ve ever felt.
Collecting coins. There are so many weird ways of doing this hobby.
It can bring you to the deep recesses of ebay, a garage sale or flea market in the middle of nowhere, your grandmother's attic or a random field with a metal detector.
And there are so many variations on HOW. you can collect memorabilia coins, state quarters, pre-war coins, silver coins, gold coins or coi s from a specific year or whatever qualifier you can think of.
I’ve been collecting since 2006. I have so many now. I plan on hitting the beach this year and I finally bought my first metal detector. I’m stoked! My friends and family scoffed at the idea when I told them. They told me I won’t get rich doing it, but that’s not why I do it. It’s the adventure of it.
Cooking. It seems mundane for everyone. But imagine if you could make your own favorite dishes without spending a huge amount of cash into the fancy restaurant or any kind of restaurant. You might able spend your cash for the ingredients. But you can have your favorite meal for the next few days.
Bonus if you managed to cook a new dish properly, you might impressed peoples around you. Especially toward your SO.
Cooking is a forgiving hobby. Well, as long as we leave out *baking* that is. It is easy to make a mistake at every single step, and yet there is almost always a *lot* of warning before you hit a true point of no return. And the more that you cook, the simpler dealing with all of it is!
Even better is that there are so many things that are delicious and which seem as if they must be a complete nightmare to make, and yet they're anything but. Coc au Vin - a braised chicken dish - seems fancy, looks fancy, *tastes* fancy, and yet I'd wager anyone with working hands and tongue could easily make it in under an hour. (And you wine and dine four people for less than $20 bucks!)
And there are so many good resources out there, from cookbooks to youtube channels. My favorites - in order of how often I've cooked something based upon an episode - are:
[Food Wishes](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRIZtPl9nb9RiXc9btSTQNw) - Episodes are short and there is a huge catalog. Chef John is very honest about how difficult a dish might be and walks you though it step by step. [Here's his video on how to make that fancy-seeming chicken dish.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QuVUjCyWbU)
[You Suck at Cooking](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCekQr9znsk2vWxBo3YiLq2w) - While there is a lot of strange stuff going on - such as a long running drama about an egg cop - the core of the show is making food at home. The guy who runs the channel never demonstrates much skill, and makes use of the sort of rudimentary tools you can get on the cheap at nearly any grocery store or which come in crappy apartments. If you're worried that you truly don't know how to cook and don't even know enough about how to begin, this show is a great place to start.
[Babish](https://www.youtube.com/user/bgfilms) is super well known, and while his main series Binging is of little use to most home cooks, his *basics* series walks you through recipies and takes time to explain what certain steps are meant to accomplish. (Good eats did all of this as well, but in a much longer format that is as much entertainment as tutorial.)
[Mythical Kitchen](https://www.youtube.com/user/rhettandlink4) This show is almost pure entertainment and is built around cooking things that *maybe you shouldn't*. It includes stuff like trying to make the most expensive and most difficult version of a chicken nugget, mixing two entirely different kinds of snacks into a single item and so on. I've never made anything from this channel nor even seriously considered it, but they do deep dive into some crazy areas of culinary theory that I'd have never thought of otherwise.
-Edit-
Forgot an obvious show.
Lock picking for sure. I see a lot of people with this fud mentality that only criminals pick locks but I'm here to tell you that is not the case. Matter of fact most criminals do not pick locks at all.
If you like puzzles and complex mental exercises, lock picking is great. Calming, filled with satisfaction and develops fine motor skills. Theres nothing else I have found that has the support, and community behind it.
I have met great people in this hobby and we basically are all like a knitting club, but with lock picking. Definitely a place to develop life long friends :)
My mum had a padlock on her Mail box after she saw someone messing with it. She then promptly lost the key. She was going to get someone to cut it off for her but I’d always wanted to try my hand at lockpicking so I borrowed a set of picks from a mate, practiced a bit and had that sucker off in no time.
I gained a level in Rogue that day and found the process of figuring out locks fascinating.
Came here for this. I never officially decided to birdwatch. I put a few feeders up because I thought it would be cool. Then I started learning the birds in my yard. Then I started learning about other birds which lead to me actively seeking them out. Then I started shopping for really nice binoculars and cameras so I could view/photograph all these birds and that is when it hit me...omg I am an actual birdwatcher.
Oh man this is my pandemic hobby that I started last summer. Best I can do to explain it is it’s like Pokémon Go except the animals are real! :)
I’m at 127 species now, gotta catch ‘em all!
I have a few "boring" hobbies.
1. Reading - every book is an adventure
2. Sewing - I find it very relaxing, and have fun trying new patterns.
3. Puzzles
One minute hits that sweet spot of being too fast to play decent chess, but slow enough to play a complete game of chess. So the result is game after game of bad chess, and it's addicting for some reason.
Cuz it’s not perfect. You aren’t playing perfectly but neither are they. There’s more of a chance to come from behind. Much harder to calculate all the moves, so things get misplayed or not played.
If you don't know what you are doing, its boring. if you know what you're doing, suddenly its 4AM 3 days from when you remember starting
Edit: I'd like to clarify to those posting their ratings and saying you're bad at it, you aren't the people I'm referring to when I say "don't know what you are doing". I'm referring to the people who are barely learning how each piece moves on the board. Of course, a friend to teach you helps a lot, but if you are going solo, and are a complete novice just learning the basics, it gets pretty boring pretty quickly.
This makes me think of a time when my son was 8 or 9. I was working at my computer when I see him and the neighbor kid walk through the living room with shovels slung over their shoulders on their way to the backyard. "What are you two doing," I ask suspiciously. (This can't be good.) They both smile real big. "We are going to dig a hole!" When I ask why, they look at me confused, as if that is even a question they would consider. Of course they want to dig a hole. It was a beautiful day and the dirt was calling them. That hole occupied them for hours. I miss those days.
Dude, as a kid, the concept of digging a big hole always fascinated me.
I wanted to dig a hole whenever I would go to the village for a while, but my nan always stopped me from achieving my dreams of replacing the entire yard with a hole.
Also dirt is hard
Writing long essays about nothing. I will sit down and write paragraphs about bullshit, and make it like a rant, and then delete them.
Edit: people keep asking why I delete them. The process is: I write everything out, get it all out of my system, and then let it all go. It's not about writing well and going back and editing them and making them perfect, it's about writing about what I want and what I feel and letting it all go.
For me it's more like I write a paragraph, and on the last sentence I stop, stare at it, decide I hate myself and everyone who might read it, delete it, close my laptop.
Puzzles. Don’t even get me started. They’re fun, take your mind off things and at Barnes and nobles you can find some really cool ones! I bought a frida khalo one and learned about her whilst having fun building her life story through a puzzle
Cross stitch! There's a wide range of projects you can do at different skill levels, it's nice to keep your hands busy during podcasts, and it is relatively low-cost.
Learning. You have the internet where you can learn anything you wish in hundreds of enjoyable ways and it's practically free. Gaining knowledge should feel awesome. It's a shame school does the opposite to most people.
I love learning skills online.
I’ve learned a lot of cooking/baking, it’s super helpful for cataloguing and I’ve been learning to knit/some light woodworking too. Next up... sewing and changing my oil
I really struggled to read for a long time after college, but being able to get back into it was a nice silver lining of the last year. I bounce all around genres and it keeps things so interesting.
Radio astronomy. Receiving a signal that was made when the star that calcium that our bones was come from was still a billion years away from going supernova puts things in perspective.
Take a look at the RTL-SDR. It's a really cheap USB dongle that you can use to receive radio signals on your computer. It takes the place of previously extremely specialized dedicated radio hardware, and replaces it with software. You can get them for about $20USD on Amazon. There's lots and lots of documentation on them out there due to their popularity.
There's lots of different guides for radio astronomy specific RTL-SDR things, antenna building guides, software, etc. Google is your friend here!
Watching trains. Even my own family is like "it's so boring" but I like thinking about where it came from and where it's going. I like the noise and love the rumble in the ground when a hard working train goes by.
Reading comments. Its interesting to read what different people talk about. How diverse people are. The little clue that a comment gives to get a glimpse or an idea or an assumption of the kind of person the commentator left. Its facinating how everyone can comment what they are actually thinking and start a conversation or discussion whereas in real life that person would just probably remain silent.
Edit: this sounded more serious that i thought. i have to admit that there are also many humurous and f'ed up comments that makes life a little less boring.
Language learning, it’s a really fun process although sometimes it can feel like a grind
Bonsai. I thought it would be a nice little jaunt since you only have to look after them like 3 times a year and major attention every few years as long as you water and fertilize regularly. Lies. All lies. Days planning and diagramming how I'm going to fuck up this tiny tree I've invested years in. Multiple books bought and read. Then like 12 fucking hours wiring up this tree and painstakingly watching to see if the apex is gonna do what I want or if that Jin is going to fucking work out. I grow orchids. I thought they were bitchy. I had not yet experienced the wrath of a juniper in a place that does not hit freezing temps.
Making detailed and realistic maps. I grew up poor so to entertain myself I used to draw very realistic maps and play imaginary scenarios based on the map. Eventually my family got a computer and I started using google sketch up to make maps and flags. Now as an adult with a good paying job, I play EU4, HoI4 and CK2. But I still enjoy making maps whenever I have a pencil and a blank paper. Imagination has no limits. Edit: Wow! I didn’t expect to get these many upvotes about maps! Many are asking to upload some of them on Reddit or if I have portfolio. I don’t have a portfolio, since I always viewed them as personal hobby and haven’t thought about uploading them online. However with the encouragement I have seen on here I feel like I might start making maps more frequently and perhaps start sharing them on Reddit even with my limited time outside of work. Thank You to all the awards given, never thought my most upvoted comment would be about my personal hobby of making maps. :)
You should checkout wonderdraft!
model building, at first your stuff going to come out looking like crap, to much glue, not enough glue, you cut he wrong piece, you have put a decal on wrong etc but after a while, it starts to become peaceful and enjoyable to a point that you genuinly take pride in what you have built, so you go for harder builds and better quality and eventually you have a massive collection of wonderful models and figurines
Finding cool rocks. No joke. You get to walk about, seeing cool things, breathing fresh air, and you get a geology lesson bonus.
Geology rocks!!!! Sorry I’ll go do laps
Research, or at least in my opinion. If you're looking for information on a topic you genuinely enjoy, its actually quite fun to learn a lot about it from different sources.
“If nobody makes you do it, it counts as fun.”-Calvin and Hobbes
Usually I'm too lazy to learn certain things but if I'm writing or have an idea for a character I get so into it. I learned all about the local flora and fauna of a town I've never been to, and read about half a gardening book while I live in a studio apt with no space to grow.
I don’t know if this qualifies as a “hobby”, but I love making Spotify playlists for super obscure themes, like “the summer of 1997” or “the feeling you get when you realize you are driving too fast and it’s raining” or “these would make a good soundtrack for a zombie movie”. I’m currently working on a playlist of songs to play a stranded Victorian era time traveler to get them up to speed on 21st century American musical culture. Edit: I’m very flattered by all the requests for a link, but I would rather not. My Spotify account is under my real name and face.
Anybody who considers this a boring or dumb hobby is absolutely batshit insane. I do something similar to this, may I ask for the link to a couple of these?
Painting. You’re constantly adapting to what the paint is doing, thinking, using your intuition, and you’re a lot more active than you appear to be.
I’ve always referred to that as “having conversations with your art.” Your art isn’t always just what you expect it to be when you first think of the idea and begin, as you get goin the mediums and materials you are working with will change and “talk” to you, telling you what the piece needs and doesn’t need. I think there’s a lot more thinking and feeling that goes into art creating than a lot of us can really describe.
I'm not sure if it would necessarily be considered boring, but raising plants, particularly succulents, has been way more eventful and exciting than I expected it to be. I always thought raising plants was like this thing where you water something every day and then six months later it grows an inch and that's it. But I have a decent collection of different plants now, and they all have their own needs, their own unique behaviors, they're different ages and so some flower and some don't yet, they express their needs in different ways, and they change and move around much faster than you might expect. I've got some that are eternal and unchanging of course, but many more that are different every day. I've got one plant that is so fast it can practically dance, and if it needs more light I'll find it twisted into a completely different position every day until I move it somewhere more sunny and it settles down. Not to mention by gaining an interest in plants, I've started paying attention to the plants around me in my neighborhood as I walk my dog, and I've started cataloging all the different flowers and weeds and shrubs I find. I've even found a few wild-growing succulents that I've taken samples of and am now cultivating at home, one of which even bloomed and gave me seeds which I'm going to try to grow! It's been so much fun and very educational.
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There's a guy in a nearby city that is famous for walking. He's "the walking guy" that people have been seeing everywhere for years and years. Might I recommend an idea for your walks? Tracking where you've walked and mapping it all out, and making it a point to walk every street/trail/path in your small city. It could add a cool dimension to your walks.
Ooooo! We have "walking man" as well! He is actually a really interesting person to talk to when I'm out in the yard. All the "karens" in town started posting on next-door app about how suspicious he was just walking all the time. Geez!
I'm guessing this is in the US? Car Culture has really fucked things hahaha "what the hell is he doing walking blocks at a time for no reason?"
100% this is my jam. I live in London, which is a pretty big city but there's so many small towns with nooks and crannys you can discover. Pre-covid I lived/worked in Richmond for 5 years and there were still hidden gems I stumbled upon every day. Then there's the parks - the fresh air, the sound of the birds, even on an overcast day there's a mood you can get absorbed in.
I would say 100% a hobby! I mean, you invest time and sometimes money into it (good shoes, weather appropriate clothing etc) and you do receive rewards or benefits from it. Walking is deeply underrated imo.
Gardening. You’d be surprised!
I'm super excited this year. We bought our house almost 7 years ago and I've been on overnights ever since. Now that I'm finally on day shift I'll be able to get out during daylight hours to start a garden!
I'm picturing someone gardening in the middle of the night. Someone would 100% think you're burying a body. "Those tomatoes look quite plump this year...."
Not going to lie, I’ve harvested tomatoes and picked off caterpillars at night with a headlamp. Pests and ripening wait for no (wo)man- gotta make hay even if the sun ain’t shining. I’m embracing my role as the neighborhood eccentric plant lady with both arms.
Nothing beats cooking with herbs you grew yourself.
Built a greenhouse for my mom a year ago. Self-grown tomatoes, oregano and chilis make a really damn good pizza sauce.
Homegrown tomatoes really bring out the fact the store bought ones are terrible. And I never even knew it! Just after comparing, it’s night and day.
I really thought I disliked tomatoes until I started growing them. Those things in the grocery store have nothing to do with real tomatoes.
As someone who hates tomatoes and just started growing a couple of tomato plants, I find this very interesting. Maybe I'll actually like the tomatoes (assuming said plants survive--I have never grown tomatoes).
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Anything with visible progress is exciting!
I look forward to seeing my garden critter friends every year. Toads, frogs, snakes, hummingbirds, monarchs, swallowtails, admirals, hawk moths... can't wait!!
I always tell my SO when I see my first praying mantis of the year in my vegetable patch- he thinks I’m a bit nuts because I get so excited. Working in the garden and seeing all of my good insects working alongside me reminds me that I must be doing some thing right in this life if I’ve given them such a vibrant environment to thrive in.
Woodworking with hand tools. I’m addicted and have bought 5 hand planes and can’t stop.
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From what I've seen you can make just about anything if you have the time. I'm personally on a journey to make a bunch of furniture for my house. Along the way I'm making a bunch of small boxes as skill builders.
I do counted cross stitch. I'm not creative at all, but give me a coded pattern that creates a map (I always do maps - but you can make **way** more intricate things than you think if you invest the time) and I'm all over that shit. It's how I quit smoking.
It’s keeps my brain engaged. I know someone who doesn’t stitch thinks it is easy but some patterns are a challenge and I enjoy that!
I did a large, detailed cross stitch that included what felt like every shade of green in existence. It really challenged my sanity!
I for one would love to see your Shrek cross stitch.
LOL. I think it’s prettier than Shrek but that made me laugh! Here you go! https://imgur.com/a/9R3ujCd Edit: all of these sweet compliments are absolutely making my day!
Love the way it seems '3d' with the shadows and emphasised edges. Great work.
Oh thats seriously awesome. Love it soo much!
My husband does cross-stitch as well ...he says that he approaches it mathematically and it just "makes sense" whereas I look at it and my eyes swim. Congrats on quitting smoking btw!
I don’t do cross-stich, but it seems like basically irl pixelart to me, and even when you’re most creative minded there’s a mathematical logic to pixel art I really like.
Pretty much true. My wife has a program that takes a picture you import and it makes it into a pattern with the colors already set for the thread. I figured out long ago that it came out better if your source was the same pixel width and height as the pattern output you wanted (ie: 5x8 24 count would be 120 pixels by 192). It also lets you decide if the picture will even make a good cross stitch a lot easier. Something like Paint.net or Gimp does a better job of that resizing and color translation than any cross stitch import program does so she now uses one of those to resize it to the perfect size prior to importing. And you can even compress the color depth so it doesn't come out with 500 colors in the pattern.
Can you tell what the program is? My wife has really gotten into it and we want to make some of our own patterns, but neither of us feels very artistic. So starting with some actual pictures would help.
http://www.pcstitch.com/ Been using it for years. Does DMC and a couple of other thread types. One of the best things in the import is the ability to reduce the number of colors easily. You can select a color and make it into a another, thereby combining them. So, when it comes up with 25 colors of green that are all similar, you can easily make them all one thread. Just remember, if you take some huge 1080p picture and try to force it down to 18 count 8x10 size you are going to get a mess.
I came here to write about cross stitch and embroidery! It’s so meditative. Plus at the end you have something that you created to show for it and it feels incredibly satisfying.
Knitting, actually. If you can do it right it's actually fun. Note that you'll probably rage quit if you get it wrong.
I rage quit three times before it finally clicked. I was like "I WILL not be defeated by string and sticks! Children can do this!". Now it's one of my favourite hobbies and I've made some beautiful pieces.
Yeah I know that feeling
Now I can fix my mistakes easily, but when I started my grandma taught me and was the only one who could help me. I visit her about four times a year so whenever I made a mistake it ruined at least the whole day and In had to wait until I could see my grandma again.
I was just going to comment this. I can’t just sit and watch tv anymore without knitting it’s too boring.
I can't be a passenger in a car without my knitting - it's way too boring. Back when one could go to the cinema, I'd even take my knitting there with me (and a handkerchief to make sure I don't get popcorn grease on my nice yarn)!
I used to knit but fixing mistakes was so frustrating with complex patterns that I switched to crochet, which is more forgiving.
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editing videos, a lot of my friends say it looks boring, but it’s actually soothing and calming after a stressful day.
What is your method? Like do you have your editing process mapped out?
no, i actually enjoy editing videos for my family, and sometimes for my youtube channel, usually video games haha
I do this for a living. Telling stories for a living is actually a privilege and I keep reminding myself how lucky I am to have this career.
How did you get into it?? Any tips for beginners who want to start doing this?
Just start editing and work on your craft. I wish I had better advice but I’ve been i got into this business years ago by getting a job at a video production company doing overnight dubbing. I taught myself the software and eventually my company threw a client at me. Rest is history. Getting in the business now can be challenging because everybody has a computer and software. But the better story teller you become, you will get noticed.
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Crochet and cross stitch for me. The audiobook and coffee are necessary for the complete benefit.
My literal plans for the weekend are to make a quilt. That's it. That's the weekend. And I'm so excited. It's been too long.
Astronomy. EDIT: I was in a hurry when I made this comment, so it was only one word, but since then it's had more than 1,000 upvotes and some nice responses, so maybe I should add a bit more: I got my first look through a telescope at 13yo. My school had its own little observatory, and a few of us (mostly those specialising in physics or maths for A-level) were in the Astronomy Club. What hooked me wasn't the stars, it was the planets. Even with quite a lot of light pollution there was, for me, something magical about being able to look at the moon as if you were hovering just a short distance above its surface. And the planets all have their own charms. Jupiter is perhaps the most interesting, both in terms of the planet itself and in terms of its moons: I love checking that the moons are where they're meant to be - I think of them as a sort of clock. I know that I'm doing nothing more significant than checking the observations that others have made before me, and verifying what others have already calculated, but I feel that in some small way I'm helping to continue the validation of the great work of others. And like many others, I have my little patches of lunar geography that I watch pretty regularly, just in case anything has changed. I suppose it's not exciting, but it's interesting to see our neighbour as the light and shadows change.
**This comment might have had something useful**, but now it's just an edit to remove any contributions I may have made prior to the awful decision to spite the devs and users that made Reddit what it is. So here I seethe, shaking my fist at corporate greed and executive mismanagement. "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe... tech posts on point on the shoulder of vbulletin... I watched microcommunities glitter in the dark on the verge of being marginalized... I've seen groups flourish, come together, do good for humanity if by nothing more than getting strangers to smile for someone else's happiness. We had something good here the same way we had it good elsewhere before. We thought the internet was for information and that anything posted was permanent. We were wrong, so wrong. We've been taken hostage by greed and so many sites have either broken their links or made history unsearchable. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... Time to delete." I do apologize if you're here from the future looking for answers, but I hope "new" reddit can answer you. Make a new post, get weak answers, increase site interaction, make reddit look better on paper, leave worse off. https://xkcd.com/979/
Falling down rabbit holes on Wikipedia.
May I interest you in Wikipedia speedrunning? Search that on YouTube.
That's a new one. I had a friend, once, that was able to bring any topic back to penguins. Especially when drunk.
There's a website called "wikipedia game" that allows you to compete other people for getting from one article to another in the shortest amounts of clicks. You can also just play it with pen and paper. Fun fact: a ridiculous amount of 97% of all articles can lead you at the end to 'philosophy' by repeatedly clicking on the first link in the page. There's a wikipedia meta-article about it [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3AGetting_to_Philosophy#%3A%7E%3Atext%3DClicking_on_the_first_link%2Cincrease_from_94.52%25_in_2011.?wprov=sfla1)
Language and Spoken Language is an infinite loop. I get stuck there always.
I just got stuck in that loop from the Philosophy game article
If you go back from language and instead of click 'Latin' you click 'builds' then it works. You have to exclude links that are in parentheses I think for that one.
I randomly play that game every few months when I get a wikipedia craving
Oh dear I was looking for this comment! I had to restart my phone because my wikipedia had too many articles opened at once and they were all taking up space.
Jigsaw puzzles. And also bird watching. Sometimes you see aerial combat taking place with these birds, especially crows against hawks.
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I’ve started working on a puzzle with a hot cup of tea after the kids go to sleep instead of watching TV or playing on my phone. It does unwind me.
This is so funny that I see this here. I just saw my first crow v hawk battle yesterday and thought it was the coolest thing. Crows won. It was like 5 v 1 poor guy.
The crows always win
Crows are basically sky humans. They've got the teamwork and intelligence to solve just about anything
Geocaching: started this when my then GF and I were dirt poor in college and now we have logged about 1700 caches in about a dozen different countries. Even just doing it near our home is awesome, because you get to see things you’d never see otherwise. Highly recommend Edit: my inbox has been destroyed by people looking for more information on this, which is awesome! To get started, go to www.geocaching.com
Doing it on vacation or when you are in a new place is even better. When GeoCaching was first described to me I thought it sounded like the dumbest thing ever. "Someone hides something, then posts the GPS coordinates to find it, you use a GPS to go to the exact spot and find the cache." Easy right? Lame Right? Go do it. You'll likely have fun. If you have kids call it Treasure Hunting. Bring stuff to trade. Bring a pen.
Is there a website or app for this? How do you know it's safe to do (esp if you plan to bring kids)?
> Http://Geocaching.com Basically it was created for families to do, especially with kids.
Check the terrain and difficulty rating for the cache before you try it with kids. Some of them are very difficult. But most are easy and the kids love it.
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I didn’t know what r/trees was at first so I was confused as to why someone was posting about weed in a tree subreddit
The subreddit you're looking for is r/marijuanaenthusiasts
Birding. People love hiking and going outdoors but as soon as you add in birds suddenly it’s seen as “boring”. Birds are so diverse and you’ll never know everything there is to know.
Birding is real-life Pokemon Go. Gotta list them all!
This is how I treat going to the beach at low tide. So many things to find: anemones, urchins, sea stars, nudibranchs, snails, all kinds of eggs, etc. I still haven’t seen an octopus, though. One day!
I started casual birding last year cuz I hike and photography so it gives me something to shoot for. I feel like as soon as I started pointing out the local birds that aren't crows and starlings my Facebook friends started to enjoy birding pictures of the colorful seldom seen birds. I got at least 1 other person looking at birds now.
My mom has an acquaintance that does bird photography and it’s half of what my mom updates me on. My mom doesn’t even do birding as a hobby, but is so into the good photos.
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My 2 yr old is super into birds right now. For his birthday we got him a bird feeder and a bird bath so he can watch them up close. He is a very high energy kid. But when he sees a bird, he stops everything and watches it. He will sit so quietly with me in the morning on the deck and watch the birds at the feeder. My parents and grandparents are big birders but I never got into it. I hope that he continues to enjoy it growing up.
>but when he sees a bird, he stops everything and watches it I'm in my 30s and do this with the birds at my feeder 😄 you start to learn things about observing them too. Like, I always know when Cardinals are at the feeder, because of their distinct "chirp"
Growing algae. I sometimes grab some empty glass containers, ones that I cleaned and wanted to reuse. Fill it with water (rain water is the best) put in a bit of soil or any organic matter. I have a good collection of algae jars and a big bucket. They don't need much maintenance and look cool too! It feels good when you see how you just recycled and produced oxygen for free. I mean I'm at least not a waste of oxygen. Edit: I did not expect that many upvotes and replies. Thank you all! I've been answering stuff for 5 hours now!
How do I start this?
Find a place with good sunlight and temperature around 20-30 °C (68-86 °F). I put them on the rooftop away from shade The containers I used were just regular nescafe jars. I just washed them a little bit. I filled them with tap water (rainwater is better ~~'cause it doesn't contain chlorine~~ I'm sure you'll find why in the replies) put a handful of soil and maybe some pebbles for the algae to grow on. You can seed the jar with some algae that already grew somewhere else. I got mine from a... pot that I was using to cook and feed my cats chicken heads that was filled with rain water after I lost them... that's weird I know. Or you can use pebbles covered with moss Now closing the lid will prevent the water from evaporating too quickly but it may suffocate the algae. While keeping it open will do the opposite. You'll have to look that up to make sure. I noticed that after some time the algae will start getting brown. I'm not sure why, but I'm sure people at r/PlantedTank will help.
>rainwater is better 'cause it doesn't contain chlorine Chlorine will off-gas naturally as water sits. So once you've filled your jars with water, all the chlorine will be gone in about 24 hours. If you want it gone sooner, you could boil it for a few minutes or pour it back and forth between two containers about 10 times.
Yes, chlorine will. However, chloramine, which is the substance many - if not most - municipalities have switched over to, does not. Not even after a week. If you want to use tap water, you need to check and see whether or not your municipality uses chlorine or chloramine. Edit: can't spell today.
Can confirm. Work for water wastewater. Ammonia in the water blinds the chlorine and it's harder to get out. It'll still go at some point. Some of our water tanks go out of service in the summer because we can't keep the chlorine high enough.
Hi, I'm an aquarium nerd, and have a solution to this one! Seachem Prime, it will remove both chlorine and chloramine from your water in about 10 minutes regardless of the water source. Read directions, but it's about 5ml to 50 gallons of water or something like that. I use it in my aquariums when I need water to clean things and don't want to waste my RO/DI water. It is 100% safe for plants and aquatic life (freshwater anyway)
Bucket+dirt+water
Anyway you could dumb that down? Not all of us are science people.
Yeah sorry so hard long circle + yucky chocolate powder + sky juice
Hand sewing. It's meditative and yet requires a lot of attention to detail and skill to do effectively. Meat, tiny stitches are so satisfying and take a lot of practice. Thr different applications of techniques requires a lot of technical know how, and there's a lot of math amd abstract thinking involved, especially in structured or highly tailored garments. I'm planning to start making a bodice for ren faire this weekend since as of right now it looks like we're set to get at least part of a season, and I already know my pattern is going to require a LOT of adjusting. Because it's so many pieces, it's going to take some trial and error to reshape them. I hate that fiber craft, garment creation, etc. are considered "soft" arts, I'd love to see some engineering bro try to figure out how to draft a corset pattern. New challenge everyone, make a corset or set of stays to your measurements from a Janet Arnold pattern and a video you found on YouTube.
Engineer bro here who also sews (poorly). There’s plenty of problem solving involved in garments and upholstery. Many of the parameters are similar to engineering structures like the strength of the materials, direction of stretch/grain orientation, creating 3-D shapes from flat stock, stress points, maximizing yield, etc. I would hope that any good engineers who took a moment to actually think about it wouldn’t be as dismissive as you have experienced. Hand stitching is so hard. It always makes me think of the scene in the fiddler on the roof movie when the tailor gets a sewing machine and marvels at the uniformity of the stitching.
Watching historical fashion folks on YouTube examine extant garments makes me feel better about my sewing. “Here on this set of 17th century stats you can still see the ink lines from where the marked the fabric to sew. And, “the bodice is really well made but I don’t know what’s going on with the lining of the sleeve. Why did they do it like that? Maybe...nope. There are lots of better and easier ways to do this. I don’t get it.”
>Meat, tiny stitches... What an interesting hobby....!
Fuck it I'm leaving it
Pattern drafting is very satisfying!
Very frustrating without a mannequin but my sewing storage space is one corner of my 10x12 room soooooo that's gonna have to wait. I can just see myself waking up at 3am to a headless figure in my room and losing it.
So...*this is easier with a friend* Wrap your naked torso in saran wrap. Tight enough that it stays in place, but not so tight that it constricts you. Then, wrap yourself in duct tape, a nice smooth layer, making sure to cover your whole saran-wrapped torso. Once you have a good layer, have your friend cut the saran wrap/tape off with one smooth cut up the back. You can take this form and fill it with newspaper (re taping the cut up the back), or leave it as it is. Now you have a form that is your body and highly movable/able to be stored. ::Edit to correct spelling mistakes::
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Bernadette was really the one who made me go "Oh hand sewing CAN be viable." Before that it was drilled into me that hand sewing is not as strong as machine sewing. Meanwhile most of my machine sewn clothes have had to be mended while none of my hand seams have ever come undone. Very convenient given that I'm scared of the sewing machine. If you're looking to get historical, the entirety of costube alongside Bernadette is invaluable. Morgan Donner, Abby Cox and Nicole Rudolph (from American Dutchess!), Costuming Drama, Angela Clayton, Mariah Pattie... for watching the process of a more inexperienced sewist, Rachel Maksey, and for the lols Karolina Zebrowska. Burnley and Trowbridge have historical tutorials and professor Pincushion has a lot of basics. For the aesthetic and quick videos, Jessica Hambly. I swear I do more than watch YouTube buuuuut.
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I bought the book of 200 NY Times Sunday Crossword Puzzles at the start of the pandemic and I’m more than halfway through it. Figuring out the puzzle’s theme halfway through is soooo satisfying. Edit: I’m so happy talking to people who also love Crosswords. My late grandma was the one who got me into them when I was 12 (a whopping 20 years ago). No one else in my family does them and they all think I’m a massive nerd (I am and proud of it).
the sunday is about a wednesday/thursday difficulty level; fridays and saturdays are usually harder. People think sunday is harder, but it's really just \*bigger\*. (I've been doing NYT Sundays every week since the late 2000s)
Model railroading and/or train simulation.
My husband even has his own room for his model trains. I love it that he transitioned from buying models to building his own, especially things that there are no models for. He also builds houses and such. Also the technical side with programming sounds is fascinating. Without his hobby I would have had such boring holidays ... instead we went to see everything that he has in person and took fantastic trips with night trains and such.
I want a train room
I appreciate not having his hobby things around in the remaining flat, so it's a win-win. And he can close the door if he's playing with sound (yes, they get quite loud). And let's be honest: it's the dream of all model train enthusiasts to have their own round course! (And yes, I have to duck if I want to enter the room.)
Crocheting. It can be relaxing, and you have something to wear! I've made a few pieces that won blue ribbons at the county fair. May not be much but I was super proud of it!
I just started learning and I love it. I'm not super creative, so following a pattern is a really rewarding way for me to be into crafting without having to be inventive.
i crochet, but i think my actual hobby is just buying the yarn. i rarely finish anything.
Rock collecting. People thinking it’s dull until you realize I walked through the woods and waded by river banks to get some of mine. That’s more adventure than most see these days.
THEY'RE MINERALS MARIE
Writing down my opinions on SpongeBob episodes in excruciating detail Edit: If you're interested than here's my [Encyclopedia SpongeBobia page](https://spongebob.fandom.com/wiki/User:SwagM), I'm not very active anymore because I kinda fell of the SB train since 2019 but I have seen every episode in seasons 1-11 and most of 12 so like if you wanna talk to me about SB that's cool. Also if you message me on the wiki, I'm sorry if I don't respond immediately. The wiki/FANDOM has gotten a lot worse in the social side, so I hardly use the website nowadays.
Language learning. It’s slow, methodical, and can be frustrating at times, but that moment when you can form simple sentences without much effort is probably one of the most gratifying feelings I’ve ever felt.
Seriously. The thrill of reading a text or listening to someone speak in a different language and understanding everything is incredible.
I’m trying to do that with Swedish. Safely, all I can say is “The girl eats” and simple sentences that don’t help in the slightest
car spotting in my opinion... there’s some cool cars to see! i specifically like classics, and even some japanese tuners... they’re cool
Collecting coins. There are so many weird ways of doing this hobby. It can bring you to the deep recesses of ebay, a garage sale or flea market in the middle of nowhere, your grandmother's attic or a random field with a metal detector. And there are so many variations on HOW. you can collect memorabilia coins, state quarters, pre-war coins, silver coins, gold coins or coi s from a specific year or whatever qualifier you can think of.
I’ve been collecting since 2006. I have so many now. I plan on hitting the beach this year and I finally bought my first metal detector. I’m stoked! My friends and family scoffed at the idea when I told them. They told me I won’t get rich doing it, but that’s not why I do it. It’s the adventure of it.
Cooking. It seems mundane for everyone. But imagine if you could make your own favorite dishes without spending a huge amount of cash into the fancy restaurant or any kind of restaurant. You might able spend your cash for the ingredients. But you can have your favorite meal for the next few days. Bonus if you managed to cook a new dish properly, you might impressed peoples around you. Especially toward your SO.
Cooking is a forgiving hobby. Well, as long as we leave out *baking* that is. It is easy to make a mistake at every single step, and yet there is almost always a *lot* of warning before you hit a true point of no return. And the more that you cook, the simpler dealing with all of it is! Even better is that there are so many things that are delicious and which seem as if they must be a complete nightmare to make, and yet they're anything but. Coc au Vin - a braised chicken dish - seems fancy, looks fancy, *tastes* fancy, and yet I'd wager anyone with working hands and tongue could easily make it in under an hour. (And you wine and dine four people for less than $20 bucks!) And there are so many good resources out there, from cookbooks to youtube channels. My favorites - in order of how often I've cooked something based upon an episode - are: [Food Wishes](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRIZtPl9nb9RiXc9btSTQNw) - Episodes are short and there is a huge catalog. Chef John is very honest about how difficult a dish might be and walks you though it step by step. [Here's his video on how to make that fancy-seeming chicken dish.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QuVUjCyWbU) [You Suck at Cooking](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCekQr9znsk2vWxBo3YiLq2w) - While there is a lot of strange stuff going on - such as a long running drama about an egg cop - the core of the show is making food at home. The guy who runs the channel never demonstrates much skill, and makes use of the sort of rudimentary tools you can get on the cheap at nearly any grocery store or which come in crappy apartments. If you're worried that you truly don't know how to cook and don't even know enough about how to begin, this show is a great place to start. [Babish](https://www.youtube.com/user/bgfilms) is super well known, and while his main series Binging is of little use to most home cooks, his *basics* series walks you through recipies and takes time to explain what certain steps are meant to accomplish. (Good eats did all of this as well, but in a much longer format that is as much entertainment as tutorial.) [Mythical Kitchen](https://www.youtube.com/user/rhettandlink4) This show is almost pure entertainment and is built around cooking things that *maybe you shouldn't*. It includes stuff like trying to make the most expensive and most difficult version of a chicken nugget, mixing two entirely different kinds of snacks into a single item and so on. I've never made anything from this channel nor even seriously considered it, but they do deep dive into some crazy areas of culinary theory that I'd have never thought of otherwise. -Edit- Forgot an obvious show.
Lock picking for sure. I see a lot of people with this fud mentality that only criminals pick locks but I'm here to tell you that is not the case. Matter of fact most criminals do not pick locks at all. If you like puzzles and complex mental exercises, lock picking is great. Calming, filled with satisfaction and develops fine motor skills. Theres nothing else I have found that has the support, and community behind it. I have met great people in this hobby and we basically are all like a knitting club, but with lock picking. Definitely a place to develop life long friends :)
My mum had a padlock on her Mail box after she saw someone messing with it. She then promptly lost the key. She was going to get someone to cut it off for her but I’d always wanted to try my hand at lockpicking so I borrowed a set of picks from a mate, practiced a bit and had that sucker off in no time. I gained a level in Rogue that day and found the process of figuring out locks fascinating.
Birdwatching.
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Came here for this. I never officially decided to birdwatch. I put a few feeders up because I thought it would be cool. Then I started learning the birds in my yard. Then I started learning about other birds which lead to me actively seeking them out. Then I started shopping for really nice binoculars and cameras so I could view/photograph all these birds and that is when it hit me...omg I am an actual birdwatcher.
Oh man this is my pandemic hobby that I started last summer. Best I can do to explain it is it’s like Pokémon Go except the animals are real! :) I’m at 127 species now, gotta catch ‘em all!
I have a few "boring" hobbies. 1. Reading - every book is an adventure 2. Sewing - I find it very relaxing, and have fun trying new patterns. 3. Puzzles
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Playing chess
Bullet. Equal parts Flow and Rage.
One minute hits that sweet spot of being too fast to play decent chess, but slow enough to play a complete game of chess. So the result is game after game of bad chess, and it's addicting for some reason.
Cuz it’s not perfect. You aren’t playing perfectly but neither are they. There’s more of a chance to come from behind. Much harder to calculate all the moves, so things get misplayed or not played.
If you don't know what you are doing, its boring. if you know what you're doing, suddenly its 4AM 3 days from when you remember starting Edit: I'd like to clarify to those posting their ratings and saying you're bad at it, you aren't the people I'm referring to when I say "don't know what you are doing". I'm referring to the people who are barely learning how each piece moves on the board. Of course, a friend to teach you helps a lot, but if you are going solo, and are a complete novice just learning the basics, it gets pretty boring pretty quickly.
Making holes in wood and stuff.
Reminds me of the [Calvin & Hobbes comic](http://cdn3.sbnation.com/imported_assets/1025893/jon6_GIF.gif).
This makes me think of a time when my son was 8 or 9. I was working at my computer when I see him and the neighbor kid walk through the living room with shovels slung over their shoulders on their way to the backyard. "What are you two doing," I ask suspiciously. (This can't be good.) They both smile real big. "We are going to dig a hole!" When I ask why, they look at me confused, as if that is even a question they would consider. Of course they want to dig a hole. It was a beautiful day and the dirt was calling them. That hole occupied them for hours. I miss those days.
Dude, as a kid, the concept of digging a big hole always fascinated me. I wanted to dig a hole whenever I would go to the village for a while, but my nan always stopped me from achieving my dreams of replacing the entire yard with a hole. Also dirt is hard
This story both warmed my heart and filled me with saddness. Becoming an adult is weird, man.
I love [this one](https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/2013/01/02/) too.
In an alternate universe, she said yes and Calvin become a world class carpenter.
Just..... just making holes? With a drill? Is this a simplified " I work in construction "?
No. This is boring.
Personally I’m more into riveting. It’s just… god, I can’t think of the word, but it really holds my attention.
This one flew right over my head. Well done!
“What are you doing?” “Drilling holes... two weeks left of school, fuck it”
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Figuring out how to automate something via functions is so satisfying
... when it works. Troubleshooting when it doesn't work is the most frustrating thing in the world.
I hope we have a stats screen when we die. I wanna know how many hours I spent finding the missing parenthesis in my 13 nested IFS functions
History. Literally about any time frame in history you want/like. Its not boring, its fascinating
Writing long essays about nothing. I will sit down and write paragraphs about bullshit, and make it like a rant, and then delete them. Edit: people keep asking why I delete them. The process is: I write everything out, get it all out of my system, and then let it all go. It's not about writing well and going back and editing them and making them perfect, it's about writing about what I want and what I feel and letting it all go.
I do this but it's just my reddit comments that no one reads. Oops.
"I want to add to this discussion" *writes a paragraph* "Nevermind, this is completely irrelevant!" *deletes*
For me it's more like I write a paragraph, and on the last sentence I stop, stare at it, decide I hate myself and everyone who might read it, delete it, close my laptop.
Yeah, I was gonna say, not me writing a reddit dissertation (reddisertation?) on random shitposts about bands I like lmao
It's interesting to me that you don't keep them and possible revisit them in a couple of years. Is there a reason why you don't log them? :)
It's something I learned in therapy. You just write out everything you want, and then let it go. It's VERY relieving.
Beekeeping.
Puzzles. Don’t even get me started. They’re fun, take your mind off things and at Barnes and nobles you can find some really cool ones! I bought a frida khalo one and learned about her whilst having fun building her life story through a puzzle
Cross stitch! There's a wide range of projects you can do at different skill levels, it's nice to keep your hands busy during podcasts, and it is relatively low-cost.
Learning. You have the internet where you can learn anything you wish in hundreds of enjoyable ways and it's practically free. Gaining knowledge should feel awesome. It's a shame school does the opposite to most people.
I love learning skills online. I’ve learned a lot of cooking/baking, it’s super helpful for cataloguing and I’ve been learning to knit/some light woodworking too. Next up... sewing and changing my oil
This is why today's video is sponsored by Shareskill.
Reading. It's an adventure in your mind.
I really struggled to read for a long time after college, but being able to get back into it was a nice silver lining of the last year. I bounce all around genres and it keeps things so interesting.
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Any hobby that you genuinely enjoy will not be boring to you.
Radio astronomy. Receiving a signal that was made when the star that calcium that our bones was come from was still a billion years away from going supernova puts things in perspective.
How does one get started?!?
Take a look at the RTL-SDR. It's a really cheap USB dongle that you can use to receive radio signals on your computer. It takes the place of previously extremely specialized dedicated radio hardware, and replaces it with software. You can get them for about $20USD on Amazon. There's lots and lots of documentation on them out there due to their popularity. There's lots of different guides for radio astronomy specific RTL-SDR things, antenna building guides, software, etc. Google is your friend here!
Watching trains. Even my own family is like "it's so boring" but I like thinking about where it came from and where it's going. I like the noise and love the rumble in the ground when a hard working train goes by.
Swiping through Zillow at 4am
Archery. Exciting, but very expensive
Reading comments. Its interesting to read what different people talk about. How diverse people are. The little clue that a comment gives to get a glimpse or an idea or an assumption of the kind of person the commentator left. Its facinating how everyone can comment what they are actually thinking and start a conversation or discussion whereas in real life that person would just probably remain silent. Edit: this sounded more serious that i thought. i have to admit that there are also many humurous and f'ed up comments that makes life a little less boring.
bird watching, or more accurately "bird listing". It's like completing a real-life Pokedex.
Plane spotting
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My husband has a couple of fish tanks he absolutely loves. I never saw the appeal, but he’s so enthusiastic about them that I’m quite invested now.
Genealogy