Hobbies
Hello, all! I've been giving some thought recently about how you can tell a lot about a person by knowing about their hobbies, and it occurred to me to make a thread that addresses hobbies. Basically, in this thread, posters can talk about what they really enjoy, whether it be writing, music, or anything else that they like to do in their free time. As for why this thread exists, well, I guess I just want to get to know you guys better.
Well, since I started this thread, I suppose I should go first. Aside from video games, I've always had a keen interest in artistic and creative expression; things like drawing sketches, writing stories, and playing a musical instrument. It didn't hurt that I also had a creative, if somewhat absentminded brain that quickly forgot about everything except what my hobbies had taught me. As a result, my head is filled with a bunch of useless stuff, like music that I had listened to many years ago, as well as more recently. It got so bad, in fact, that every one of my friends called me a 'living musical library' that could sing a song from beginning to end without struggling to remember the words. My current record is roughly 350 songs total, which I will admit is kind of a bad thing, since that memory could be used for something more practical.
As for what kind of music I like, well, I'll listen to nearly anything (except polka), but I generally don't listen to songs that are basically people boasting about how great or badass they are, as well as how bad their lives are. I just couldn't care less about any of that. My favorite genre is metal, though, especially metal songs that tell a story without resorting to the aforementioned topics.
My interest in music isn't just in listening to it, but in playing it as well. I've been playing the piano and harmonica since I was a young boy, and the trumpet since the start of middle school. I liked performing in front of crowds, despite being shy in normal conversation. In our high school band, I was usually the designated soloist during performances. Now, I mostly play for fun, and to scare off my neighbor's cat when it comes around my house (they like to let it roam, and it always knows the way back home apparently. It DOES keep coming back to my house after all).
I also like to draw, obviously. My profile pic is my work, though I did use a postcard for a reference when drawing it. I haven't been able to draw as much as I used to, but I occasionally practice some sketches whenever I have time. I drew my pic in high school, but it's the only drawing I'm willing to share publicly.
Finally, writing. I'll be honest, I haven't had much practice in recent years due to time constraints, and I think that my writing has suffered as a result. I was writing a story here on the forum, but I kinda decided to stop after completing the fourth chapter since I felt like my writing had gotten worse than when I started writing it. I'm gonna need more time and practice to get back to where I was a few years ago before possibly trying again, though maybe not as a thread on the forum. Ideally, I would like to get it published if I could, but it still needs quite a bit of work before it can get to that point.
Anyway, enough about me
. Feel free to share your hobbies with you fellow forumites here in this thread.
Well, since I started this thread, I suppose I should go first. Aside from video games, I've always had a keen interest in artistic and creative expression; things like drawing sketches, writing stories, and playing a musical instrument. It didn't hurt that I also had a creative, if somewhat absentminded brain that quickly forgot about everything except what my hobbies had taught me. As a result, my head is filled with a bunch of useless stuff, like music that I had listened to many years ago, as well as more recently. It got so bad, in fact, that every one of my friends called me a 'living musical library' that could sing a song from beginning to end without struggling to remember the words. My current record is roughly 350 songs total, which I will admit is kind of a bad thing, since that memory could be used for something more practical.
As for what kind of music I like, well, I'll listen to nearly anything (except polka), but I generally don't listen to songs that are basically people boasting about how great or badass they are, as well as how bad their lives are. I just couldn't care less about any of that. My favorite genre is metal, though, especially metal songs that tell a story without resorting to the aforementioned topics.
My interest in music isn't just in listening to it, but in playing it as well. I've been playing the piano and harmonica since I was a young boy, and the trumpet since the start of middle school. I liked performing in front of crowds, despite being shy in normal conversation. In our high school band, I was usually the designated soloist during performances. Now, I mostly play for fun, and to scare off my neighbor's cat when it comes around my house (they like to let it roam, and it always knows the way back home apparently. It DOES keep coming back to my house after all).
I also like to draw, obviously. My profile pic is my work, though I did use a postcard for a reference when drawing it. I haven't been able to draw as much as I used to, but I occasionally practice some sketches whenever I have time. I drew my pic in high school, but it's the only drawing I'm willing to share publicly.
Finally, writing. I'll be honest, I haven't had much practice in recent years due to time constraints, and I think that my writing has suffered as a result. I was writing a story here on the forum, but I kinda decided to stop after completing the fourth chapter since I felt like my writing had gotten worse than when I started writing it. I'm gonna need more time and practice to get back to where I was a few years ago before possibly trying again, though maybe not as a thread on the forum. Ideally, I would like to get it published if I could, but it still needs quite a bit of work before it can get to that point.
Anyway, enough about me
. Feel free to share your hobbies with you fellow forumites here in this thread. 22
Comments
I'm a lot like you, @Nimran. I also enjoy drawing and music, and although I've never been good at playing an instrument, I really enjoy singing. One of these days I'll find a chance when I'm in the house alone and I'll record a song with my fancy microphone. ^_^;;
If you want to see any of my art, I have a deviantart account by the same name as my forum username. I warn you, though: it's all badly-drawn animu portraits of my OCs.
These days, I still watch anime, even collect entire series that I come to adore, but time constraints have stifled my drawing abilities... I haven't drawn anything significant in a long time. Hopefully I'll be able to fix that.
Not only do I really like video-games, but I love to play board games too! And I'm not talking about Monopoly and the Game of Life. I'm talking about European-brand games, good board games like Settlers of Catan, Ticket to Ride, Carcassone, Dominion, and many, many more.
I play Magic: The Gathering on a semi-competitive level and attend Friday events whenever I can. Just last Friday I got 6th place in a draft. My highest is 2nd! As a kid I used to play the Pokemon trading card game and Yugioh!, but... I grew to dislike the direction the newest editions went and lost interest.
Writing's really the only creative hobby I hope to turn into a career. I've been writing stories since middle school, dubbed the "shy girl in glasses who writes in notebooks" by my peers.
Though, right now I'm in a serious slump... I blame the carefree years of public schooling that gave us summers off and the freedom to do nothing productive for three whole months. I struggle this time of year to keep up my creative endeavors, and I feel the quality in my writing go down.
What's best to remember is, the muse is like a wave, and it comes and goes in ups and downs, and no one person can be at their best all the time. Even if you write nothing but poopy prose for three whole months, at least it's better than no poopy prose at all.
Just have to keep at it, and it'll all come back to you.
I believe I have few hobbies that I can mention here. These are drawing, videogames and reading mangas. There are some activities I do enjoy, and some more interests I am in, but I don't think they can be considered a hobby. Positive psychology, for example, is an interest of mine, not hobby.
Let's start right with the bat with drawing. I am mostly in digital art I like to create using my Wacom Bamboo tablet. I might have few years worth of "breaks", but I think I've been fond of drawing when I was little kid. Too bad I was never blessed with any talent anyhow. I struggled a lot by honing my skills to my current level, and I'm still not satisfied with myself. I've yet to met person as serious about drawing skills as I am, and less skilled than me. Worth mentioning is that my current avatar is of course, my drawing, "Scumbag Sasuke". I dream of earning additional money by making commissions in the future. Dream, that is.
Videogames. I've been playing those since I was kid, and by now few things are painfully obvious for me. I might enjoyed gaming and I still do, but I've spend too much time on them. This, I believe led me to damage my social skills in general. I have only a few good friends, and I often feel ignored by the rest of people of my age, fellow university students. In retrospective, I think I've wasted too much time on gaming.
Mangas and animes. Well, I am very fond of eastern cartoons, and I don't know sure why. Yes, mangas are comicbooks, and animes are cartoons. "Mangaka" in japanese is just japanese cartoonist. There is nothing wrong about admitting that. I like shonen mostly, but I am wiling to read pretty much everything my bro or friend is recommending to me. My favourite manga series, surprisingly, is not Naruto but Fullmetal Alchemist.
That's about me. Let me hear about the rest of you
Video games is the biggest one at the moment. I don't play as much as I used to during my school/univesity years, but as I can jump at almost any moment to play, it's where most of my free time is spent. Mostly games from late 90's on PC both singleplayer and multiplayer with friends. I go usually for cRPG, RTS and FPS from that time e.g. Blizzard games: WarCraft II, StarCraft, Diablo, some other examples: Quake, Unreal, Gothic, Age of Empires, Transport Tycoon, and of course: Baldur's Gate and Planescape: Torment.
Spring and Summer is my prime time to do my favourite physical activities: wandering/exploring on foot, cycling and canoe/kayak swimming. These require quite a lot of time and good weather, so unfortunately I'm not always able to do these as frequently as I would like to.
For wandering I usually take my two sweet dogs that enjoy it as well. I love going to woods and places far from civilization, trying to find some new areas. On weekends I like going for the whole afternoon, sometimes my gf and friends like to join me. During these trips (on a bicycle as well) I used to take pictures with some of the most interesting views and locations.
Cycling is by far my favourite, since it enables me to visit places quite far from my home. Two days ago I went for a 3 hour tour with woods, small villages, lakes, rivers and hills - 50 km total. Most of the time I go alone, since rarely anyone that I know enjoys riding such a long distances and the area that I live in is very "wavy" I would say (many hills). Love listening to my favourite music and visiting new places. My legs hate me for that sometimes, since I have just a normal, cheap bicycle.
Canoe swimming I do much less than the previous two, because of the cost, but I always do it with my friends. It's a lot of fun and usually takes the whole afternoon/morning. We mostly choose the rivers without many obstacles, since we like to relax and enjoy the view of the wild areas around the river. I'm glad that there are a lot of lakes and small rivers within woods around here.
Music is another of my hobbies, both listening to it and making my own. I love music that focuses on the atmosphere, no matter what genre it is, but I like ambient mixing with metal style the most. Bands like Neurosis, Rosetta and Isis are some of my favourites and in 3 weeks Rosetta will be playing in Warsaw, can't wait to meet those guys again. I play the guitar and enjoy it a lot, but I'm not that good with it. I can sing a bit and love experimenting with sounds in general, changing with effects etc. Nowadays I rarely get a chance to create my own stuff, because I need to be alone with a lot of time available and that has become quite difficult to achieve.
The one thing I thought I would never get a chance to do is to play pen and paper RPGs. Last month however, I managed to gather a small group of new players and we're playing AD&D 2E. Of course I had to be the DM, but I have some experience with that. I missed playing RPGs, there's always a chance to make some memorable stories. I tried writing some short stories in the past, but I enjoy writing adventure scenarios and make my own world much more.
My biggest regret is that unfortunately I simply don't have as much time available to my hobbies as I would love to. My job being the main reason for that.
And I hate Autumn/Winter, ugh.
When I was younger and a lot fitter I was a serious adrenalin junkie and loved sports like mountaineering, skiing, skydiving and white water rafting. Mountaineering especially, but I gave that up when I was asked to join a team to climb the north wall of the Eiger and realised that I simply didn't have the bottle to risk other peoples lives as well as my own (that particular climb has a very high failure rate).
I also enjoy wildlife photography (for pretty much the same reasons as I enjoy fishing) although it's much harder to take commercially successful photos these days (thanks a bunch Photoshop).
Of indoor pursuits, I used to play a lot of Bridge, my Bridge partner and I played together for fifteen years and travelled all over the place playing in national tournaments but when I got to Master level it all became too serious and no fun at all so I haven't picked up a hand of cards in anger for years. Obviously I still play D&D when I can find a group of like-minded people to play with but that again can be very time consuming, although I make a point of never taking it that seriously.
Reading I do not consider to be a hobby - it is a life support mechanism.
In order of current (this changes constantly) importance my hobbies are playing the guitar for about fifteen years now, singing which came kinda naturally after I picked up the guitar (I like to visit a karaoke bar every now and then), playing video games obviously (mainly strategy and rpg games), football on a very very amateur level, working out at the gym and jogging.
Music and sports are the two things I know I couldn't do without.
I used to love drawing or painting in traditional or digital media, chalk, charcoal, acrylics, oils, prints, stencils, photoshop all of that good stuff. I even got into 3D, studied maya, really enjoyed the modeling and texturing aspects and so got into zBrush.
These are all things I used to love doing, but now I have a job and spend all my free time playing games or watching anime and series. I try to draw every now and then, but my technique is so bad it just depresses me, so I stop.
Also listening to audio books and reading comics.
Edit: oh, and add fencing to that.
Here's the shameless link, if you want: https://www.etsy.com/shop/MeaglothsMetals
Though I haven't been posting as much lately.
2. The news. Follow politics and biotechnology research through various magazines, newspapers and online sources.
3. MOVIES. I am crazy in love with them. Also television shows, though many of my favorite have recently come to an end.
4. Comics reading. All Marvel stuff, Invincible, Walking Dead, anything by Ed Brubaker ever, Revival, Saga and a million other things. I spend a week every couple months catching up on Marvel stuff, while reading Daredevil and all my indie comics the week they come out.
5. Listening to metal on the way to work. Iron Maiden, Kamelot, Blind Guardian, Symphony X, Iced Earth, Firewind and others... but ESPECIALLY Iron Maiden. Also like lots of other music and I am a huge T-Swift fan.
I also play video games (obviously), primarily on console... read quite widely and prolifically, and watch slightly more tv and movies than I really should.
I enjoy writing, but don't do as much as I should. I have fits and starts with it... a 12 hour session, followed by weeks of not going near it... My Magnificent Octopus remains unwritten.
Other than that, I've taken up running again. I used to be a runner many years ago and I want to get back into it. Gaming, of course, and I like going to the ballet.
For most of my life history has been the only thing I've read. Ground zero is World War II, but everything from Ancient Egypt through mid-20th Century is fair game. That basically means reading, war gaming, museums and scale modeling (check out planedave.net for my latest).
Other interests would be movies and American football (go Bears!).
Edit: Well, I shouldn't say old anime, I should say old animated films and series. The Last Unicorn is also super hype as far as animation goes.
I intend to fix the parts that left me feeling unsatisfied, and I'll use the written playthrough to practice some more before continuing on.