For example, I play the drums and tend to think of myself as a drummer. Do you love games, consider yourself a gamer? Are you a chef, a bodybuilder, maybe an artist? What is it that you love to do?
Nerd. I just do a ton of nerdy things, s’all. I can program, design in CAD, play PC games, design electronics, work in IT security, work on 3D printers, grow mushrooms of all kinds and the list goes on. For the most part, I just like to learn about all kinds of engineering things. Learning about quantum physics is my newest endeavor, but not at super high level of course.
What has happened over the years is that I have just learned to exploit my ADHD and all of my hobbies tie into each other somehow. It’s more efficient and it helps if I start to lose interest in one of them for a bit.
Hello cousin. I feel where you’re coming from.
I’m not a “Senior Process Analyst” or even a lawyer.
I’m a dad and a maker and a nerd.
I wouldn’t say I really identify as a lawyer but I do think the profession impacts how we think about things?
If we’re going for ‘what defines us,’ like others, I’m going with ‘Huge Fucking Nerd.’
Fair. I did spend a LOT more time thinking about Terms of Use and arguing with OnShape’s legal department when investigating CAD apps than a normal human would have. I checked out of actual practicing well over a decade ago, though.
I checked out of actual practicing well over a decade ago, though.Living the dream then, eh? Haha!
Lol. A dad and a maker here as well. Just saying “maker” would have summarized everything much better.
Too much gaming and The Expanse and arguing about Star Wars online to say I’m only doing productive nerdy things, but even back to high school and college, long before I ever heard the term, sometimes the urge to “just make somethin’” would become overwhelming.
Diablo 4 broke me with too much hope that it would get better. I tried to roll into Starfield, but that finished off my spirit. It was the final bullet, as it were. I’ll game again but that experience destroyed any motivation for the last several months.
Another ADHD, maker and hobby collector. I was/is into keyboards, CAD, firearm engineering, electronic engineering, micro soldering, computer repair, kitchen knives, sharpening, wood working, etc.
What ties my hobbies around is mostly making and engineering. I love hobbies that have a thing to solve. Both designing and executing optimal performance for each of my hobbies, thus the engineering and making.
Once I perfect my woodworking, electronics, and CAD/3D printing, I will have finally achieved the maker’s holy trifecta
I use CAD for work, What sorts if things do you design and what program do you use?
I’m an archaeology & history enthusiast. I like the term “past-o” but I live in the US and few people get a deep cut reference to a british comedy show.
I just love the variety of human responses to existing in the world, I can’t help but bring it up all the time and I feel like it colors my perspective of the present and what’s possible.
I’ve never heard past-o before but I kinda dig it! I don’t know the reference at all though, so I totes get why you wouldn’t use it much 😅
That’s a Peep Show reference, right?
Yep! I just checked and it’s like season 6, so pretty deep in.
Regardless, that’s straight up my all-time favorite show - especially as a fellow past-o. Mark’s historical references to his own life are fantastic. It’s crazy that the show isn’t more popular here in North America. My wife got me into it years ago, but literally no one I’ve mentioned it to in person has ever even heard of it.
Yeah, especially with Olivia Coleman’s popularity and consistently amazing performances, I’d think it’d be more popular. It’s a lot of neurotic English awkwardness to withstand though, I suppose.
Mark’s historical references are all so funny. Johnson and Super Hans are both hilarious - every single word they say. My wife and I love how awful Elena is, she’s just the worst.
The WW2 re-creationist episode and the wedding episode are some of the best written episodes of TV I think. Right up there with the Simpsons’ Cape Feare or Futurama’s War is the H-Word for me.
I guess maybe mushroom hunting.
In my late teenage years, I got really into hitting my friends with sticks - competitively.
Am now in my forties and still use the same damn username.
Kendo or western sword stuff? I used to train kenjutsu/iaido for a while.
Unfortunately not much hitting, but lots of prancing about with swords!
Western! I’m currently studying Germanic two-handed longsword, Ringeck specifically. The level of improvement in our modern understanding of European sword styles has grown so much over the last 20 years it’s insane.
I used to cross train with a buddy who studied kenjutsu! We’d attend our respective classes and then spar with each other. It was really cool to get that different perspective on sword fighting from each other.
(One time, he managed the coolest disarm on me where he managed to hook my guard with the tip of his sword and pulled the blade from my hands. Caught me 100% off guard.)
Video games are so much more my hobby then anything else, any other one feels kind of fake. Unfortunately calling myself a gamer is basically a red flag, so i avoid it at all costs
I call myself a gamer sometimes because I’m a queer woman and I enjoy having the power to cause aneurysms in the people who swathe themselves in red flags.
My current interests are yoga, succulents, reading and painting but having adhd makes this list ever changing. I think yoga has stuck the most, seventeen years and counting, but I don’t think of myself as a yogi.
Years ago I adopted the identifier ‘Cascadian’ as I fit most of the stereotypes.
(Referring to those of us that live in/around the Cascade mountain range.)
I know it’s not ‘a hobby’ but being native to the PNW, it really is a lifestyle. We’re out playing in the wilderness, hunting, fishing, enjoying the rain. We smell a little like moss & dirt with a hint of patchouli. We grown our own food and prefer our animals over people most of the time. I’m about to move across the country and I have no idea what my life will be like. I spend 90% of my free time outside in wilderness where most of my ‘hobbies’ take place.
Snowboarder. It’s just my favourite thing to do going on 15 years now. It’s influenced where I chose to live, the friends I’ve made, sparked a passion for outdoors that lead to also being a backpacker, climber, mountain biker, and realize my whole thing is really just having fun flowing through nature.
Photographer. All that time in nature puts me in pretty places so I wanted to take landscapes. That’s still my favourite genre, but I also go for random photo walks, am my social groups go to wedding photographer, document my own kid and family, collect and shoot old school film cameras, develop my own film even. I’m that random weird friend always walking around with a camera.
I’m a nerdy hippie! I love video games and random facts, but I’ll talk for hours about psychedelics and go to music festivals and talk about how opening it is. I play percussion, but it feeds into the hippie vibe I try to convey. :)
I really identify with instruments as well, my drummer friend. I would call myself a guitarist, mainly, but I can play drums and produce music as well so maybe I could expand that title to just ‘musician’. Keep on slamming those skins.
Oh hell yeah! Guitar is my second instrument, I’m not nearly as good at it as drums but it’s really fun too! I can’t produce at all though yet, my experiments there have been a disaster 😅
I’m curious though, what kinda music do you tend to gravitate towards?
Honestly, metal and hardcore music is my bread and butter, but I am pretty ADHD when it comes to music. I’ve also made hip hop beats, and edm tracks. I listen to just about anything except pop and country(I love some bluegrass and hyperpop though).
I am like the opposite to you where I am not nearly as good at drums as I am on guitar, but drums are so much fun. What kind of music do you like to play and listen to?
It’s mostly just metal or rock for me lol. I don’t branch out much to be honest, I listen to some punk, hip hop, and pop too, but not a lot. I don’t think I really dislike much of anything though, I’ve gotten a lot more tolerant of country after being made to listen to it in the car a bunch 😝
Bass player. It’s just what I do.
I collect flashlights and am registered as a flasher…
I love to ride and rebuild motorcycles. It’s so satisfying getting a crusty old bike and making it a reliable machine again.
It does influence how I think of myself. I’m proud of being able to disassemble and reassemble an entire motorcycle.
It’s an amazing feeling going down the highway on two wheels, knowing that the machine underneath me used to be a pile of parts in boxes.
The Zen and art of motorcycle maintenance.
I’m a cat lady if my cats count as a hobby (and I count them as a hobby). Also I play a lot of video games but have been socialized not to call myself a gamer because of gatekeepers.
Sounds like a gamer girl to me 🤷
My main fixation is developing a tabletop role playing game. I’m not a game developer by profession, but I’m definitely one by practice at this point.
After a year of work, our game is getting close to release, and I’m so excited to see what I do with my time after it does.
I have a lot of hobbies, so I’m not worried, but I’m looking forward to whatever comes next. I hope to keep up with game development, but I think it’ll be a relief to change things up.
If anyone’s interested, the game has a community at slrpnk.net/c/fullyautomatedrpg .
