Hi everyone. I am feeling like I’ve lost any direction after getting laid off earlier this year (was working as an analyst in telecom and very recently landed a much lower position in healthcare data entry due to necessity). I already have several hobbies but I am either burnt out on them or they have lost their luster (similar to how life has lost its luster for me this past 6 months).
I would really love to learn a new skill, preferably using my hands to create something while challenging my brain. I’m willing to take classes, study, practice, and buy some equipment required for the skill.
Please tell me about your skill/hobby that gives you purpose. I’ve kind of exhausted google search which always returns the same 20 or so craft suggestions like “make custom invitations for weddings”, and while that sounds good for someone, it may not be good for me.
Current hobbies: Music composition and gardening,
Gymnastics. Seriously. You don’t need to be all that athletic to do the core basics. You get fitter and have fun just throwing yourself onto big soft mats.
Do you live in an area where you can go sailing?
Heh, unfortunately no. I was born and raised in Ft Lauderdale, but now reside in Missouri… so no where near water, lol.
Not trying to dox myself, but I also live in Missouri and have a sailboat on Carlyle Lake in IL (about an hour from St. Louis). If you’re anywhere in the area, our sailing club is doing our annual Try Sailing Day on June 22nd. Free rides on a variety of different small sailboats and catamarans in exchange for a gentle sales pitch to sign up as an associate member, take some lessons, and be able to rent out any of the club’s fleet boats or volunteer to crew for someone on the Sunday buoy racing circuit.
Thats super cool. I didn’t think it would really be a thing around here. I will look into it. Thanks!
Most of the larger lakes in the region have similar organizations, Perry and Smithville over on the KC side as well as the Ozarks in south central all have sailing orgs to a greater or lesser extent.
I’m taking some welding classes later this year. Being able to fix or create things with a welder seems like a useful skill to have.
I suspect the intro classes are all the same regardless if you take welding into the art direction or the mechanical direction.
That’s really cool. I’ve considered welding, seems really neat. Good luck, build something awesome!
Also, you can make really good money welding.
deleted by creator
All great suggestions. I was gifted a secondhand resin printer a while ago. I don’t have any post processing stuff or anything so haven’t really delved into it.
Currently I am sitting on the board of directors for a new non-profit. Been trying to get it off the ground and have done some good in the form of utility relief for families in need. Its a lot though and while I am keeping at it, its not really scratching my itch to find new purpose.
If you become a plumber or electrician it will satisfy your desire to create with your hands while challenging your brain. It pays decently good and keeps you in shape too.
As an electrician you’ll start off paid low for a year or two as a laborer, but in four or five years I think you’ll be a trade professional making good money and doing useful work.
Trades are great careers to be in now. Maybe cabinet making and volunteer at habitat for humanity? Learn something new that might help down the line, and do some good at the same time. Wiring, welding, or fixing an old car is another route to learn a useful and potentially employable skill.
Maybe woodworking? It can get dusty and you need some room but you can also make smaller things that don’t need big power tools or a lot of room. Like miniature things.
Or computer programming. Create an app. Or do something fun like follow one of the coding challenges from the YouTube channel The Coding Train
I was going to say the same. My husband likes gardening and builds all different kinds of planters - raised beds on the ground, elevated planters on wheels, small box planters with handles so he can easily carry it in/out for starting seeds.
I definitely have wood working on my radar. I have some basic hand and electric tools for home improvement stuff. Unfortunately I’m really burnt out on programming and computer stuff. I spend my work day in front of a computer doing mind numbing repetition. I know I should have clarified that further in the original post, sorry about that.
I really enjoyed learning to homebrew, and my family and friends really enjoyed drinking the mead I’ve made. You can homebrew all sorts of stuff, too - beer and wine of course, but also kombucha and ginger ale. I’m looking at professional kit for my next batch which is going to be a few hundred dollars at least of steel, but my first fermentation tubs were something like $35.
My only up-front recommendation would be to get a conical fermenter as it minimises loss when racking/bottling.
And cider! Holebrewing is a lot of fun, and you can definitely get started on the cheap.
Homebrew is so fun, and I love how you can make it as complex as you want. Like, you can just mix some honey and some water (in the right ratio) and let it sit, and you’ve got mead! Or you can add flavors. Or experiment with yeasts. Or brew beer and experiment with hops and grains. It’s a hobby that really meets you where you want it to.
That sounds really cool. I am going to look into this some more.
Homebrew is a really good idea. You can get amazing results for relatively cheap investment. Take a look at the Robobrew and similar all in one kits. They’re basically brew in a bag systems that work really well.
Awesome! I found https://stormthecastle.com/mead via the sidebar of the old meadmaking subreddit and still go back to reference the tutorials and recipes occasionally. Seems like the only community on Lemmy is https://sopuli.xyz/c/homebrewing, but it’s a big one.
This was one of my favourite recipes posted on the old orange site (luckily it was crossposted to imgur): https://imgur.com/gallery/neon-knights-indigo-mead-D0IAs
Two rules if you do this OP:
-
clean everything all the time, this is an unskippable step. You must sanitize everything the beer touches!
-
RDWHAHB
-
You’re on Lemmy, why not try your hand at contributing to some open source projects that catch your interest?
Feeling lost and with no direction, what skill should I learn?
You could go into teaching?
Yeah, when I was younger, I could always see myself as a teacher. The truth is, its not enough money and being more of a “jack of all trades” type, I don’t have any expertise in anything to be able to teach someone else effectively. At least that’s how it feels to me.
What about volunteering? Usually no credentials or experience is required. You get out of the house, get to be around people, and you get the satisfaction of feeling like you are doing something useful, which is rewarding in itself.
It could be anything. You have all kinds of organizations wanting volunteer help: social outreach programs, churches, scouts, clubs, etc. See if anything local catches your interest.
I’m already on the board of directors for a non-profit on a volunteer only basis. I have a passion for charity, but its pretty slow going sometimes. Its kind of lost its luster like everything else.
Have you deepened into jazz harmony theory? What about permaculture?
Learning buddhist meditation is also a great asset IMHO
It’s really all going to depend on your tastes and lifestyle. Like I could recommend that you get a dog and start learning how to train dogs as a hobby, but that’s just not going to work for everyone. What’s important is that you explore things and maybe even try some hobbies that could potentially improve your well-being. Maybe you live somewhere near a good hiking spot and you could take up hiking to get outdoors and get more exercise. Maybe you could learn how to cook and explore how to make healthy meals that suit you better. Or maybe you just want to create something and you could take up woodworking or make model planes or something. The possibilities are endless, you just need to decide what you’d like to get out of it.
Personally, I spend most of my time for work indoors on a computer, so most of my hobbies involve using my hands and getting outdoors. I took up a lot of extra hobbies during covid for obvious reasons. So here goes my list of >!hobbies that will maybe give you some ideas:
- Cooking/baking/bread
- Candy making
- Jam making
- Gardening
- Canning (goes great with gardening!)
- Succulents
- Mixology
- Dog training
- Camping/hiking (this one is minimal only because I don’t live somewhere with good hiking spots)
- Board games, video games, and movies during the winter when I can’t go outside
Other things I’ve considered taking up but haven’t for various reasons:
- 3D printing
- Bonsais
- Home brewing
What kind of candy do you make? I make cannabis edibles. I’ve done gummies, peanut butter cups, caramels, and hard candies. I tried peppermint melts but they were really terrible!
Taking your initial post and this comment into consideration, you may be in a situation I find myself in (or I may be projecting, who knows). I started out with some regular ass depression and threw in what was originally some recreational weed consumption. After a while I found myself as a daily weed smoker. My partner seems to have a much different experience as a daily smoker than I do. For me it manifests itself as you are describing, just a lack of excitement about life. I feel like my weed hangover isn’t like an alcohol one, but rather it saps my motivation to do anything productive that I’m not being held accountable for. If I was also unemployed and unable to find a job, I’m sure it would be worse for me. At the moment, I’ve cut back on my consumption and am making it a point to only partake on weedkends. Pairing that with more exercise has worked well for me in the past, but I find it difficult to get in the exercise habit with that low level of motivated energy. Finding a form of exercise where you don’t notice the work you’re doing is also helpful. I don’t much like basketball, but a friend of mine invited me out to fuck around and shoot hoops with them. Probably the easiest time I had getting in some cardio without realizing it. Nowadays, I’ve got a rowing machine that I use while I watch streaming shows. I usually find my lust for life returning when I’ve put in the maintenance on the machine that is my body. It’s a lot easier to feel alive when you feel alive.
I mostly make chocolate based candies, but I dabble in other candies from time to time like caramels, candied nuts, candied fruits/ginger/etc. I like to make candies around Christmas time to give to family and friends as they make really nice gifts.
Navigation?
Based on what you wrote, referencing burnout, I suspect that the issue isn’t that you need a hobby, it’s that you need to make time to do nothing at all.
Go for walks in nature, away from technology, walk alone or with friends, laugh, tell stories, share secrets and dreams.
The more you do, the more resilience builds up, the better you can cope with stress and work.
Only then might you find joy in a hobby. For me it was Amateur Radio, but it might be different for you.
i got my amateur radio license (U.S. technician) about a month ago at a big convention. i was thinking of suggesting the hobby to the poster but first read through the comments, to check if it were suggested already. your initial advice is probably better. i’m realizing i overloaded myself and burned out during the time leading up to the test and now i’m not entirely sure why i tried getting the license in the first place. i still don’t even have a radio. I think i wanted to learn more about electronics and one thing led to another. now my mind goes blank when i try to think about what to do. i’m not OP but found it to be good advice, thanks.
Welcome to the community, we’re all still figuring out what to do with it :)
When you want to reconnect with the hobby, after looking after yourself, look for my callsign, VK6FLAB. I have produced a weekly article about the hobby for the past 13 years and there’s plenty of suggestions for things to do and learn.
All good points. I make time with friends when I can, getting laid off from my job really messed me up. I had been there for 11 years a lot of my closer friends are tied to that job and people I worked with. I still go out to lunch or for coffee with them when possible, but I don’t see them every day like I used to. I am going to double my efforts to spend time with them.
I learned how to flintknap a little, and it was super fun. I heard buying rocks can be expensive if you don’t live near where they’re plentiful, but what hobby doesn’t get expensive? I went to the class with my brother in law and he got absolutely lost in the sauce working on his flint, and didn’t talk to anyone else there
It can be tiring but it’s definitely fun seeing what you’ve made (even if you’re not very good at it like me) and besides, you get to say you’re hitting rock/buying rock so there’s even more fun to be had!
