I had been wanting to learn how to play the guitar for years, but laziness, i guess, kept me from it. I picked it up with moderate seriousness and am very greatful i did. I wish i would’ve started sooner.
I started reading regularly. Been doing it for a few years now. I think it was exactly what I needed in my life. I pretty much cut off playing video games and replaced it with books. 👍
Nice!
Porque no los dos?
No reason in particular. I can’t get interested in video games anymore. So I have unintentionally replaced my free time playing video games with reading. If I could manage to get interested in a video game then I would still play it.
Started playing chess. Did all the lessons on lichess. I still suck, but I definitely am a lot better than I was.
I did the same thing. My playing somehow got an entire friend group that never played chess to all start playing regularly. Every time we hang out someone breaks out the board and everyone tunes in. It’s so much fun and I never expected to be a chess person.
Enjoying your time doing something is the point, getting better can always be the result. Keep it up!
Walking every street in my giant suburban section of L.A, picking up litter as I go. 3 years, and 1,200-ish miles so far. And probably thousands of pounds of trash.
I don’t know if I’ll commit as hard and long as you, but nonetheless you have inspired me to walk out this evening with a trash bag to go pick up some litter. Captain Planet would be so proud of us.
Report back and share how it went? It’s so gratifying and rewarding for me–whether or not anyone sees me do it. And you don’t even have to commit at my level: It started with the notion of picking up just one piece every day…
Only managed to pick up about 8 water bottle types, and about 2 small trash bags worth of random debris, rubber, ropes/lines, and for the love of all that is holy why do people smash glass bottles, like come on! But overall getting dirty helped make my area just a tiny bit cleaner for a little while and I can’t complain about that!
I love that feeling that a space is a little better off for my having passed thru it…
Nightly drinking. At this point, I don’t know what life was like before I started, and as much as I know I’m shortening my life, I actually really enjoy the daily stress relief - I’m weirdly happier overall these days as a result, although I do keep my intake low.
I don’t smoke, vape, trip, weed is a no go, as it triggers psychotic thought patterns, and I don’t take anything else (unless caffeine counts, in which case, I’d rather fucking kill myself than give up coffee.) I enjoy having something to lean on. We’re all dying, some of us slightly faster than others by choice. I don’t think a couple whiskeys a night is all that bad, all things considered. The world is moving in a direction I’m not compatible with on a deeply personal level anyway, so fuck living until 80.
You could try taking edibles with lower amounts of tch. Taking 1MG might take the edge off for your coping needs but shouldn’t be enough to give you high anxiety or psychotic thoughts.
As someone who drank like you for years, it slowly became a much larger problem in my life. Sober for a little over 2 years now and use THC regularly to help when needed.
Sounds like you’re happy where you are at now but if you do want to look into it, there are stopdrinking communities here and Reddit (more active there) to learn more.
I have been thinking about giving cannabis a go again lately, but I’m honestly pretty frightened of the stuff nowadays. I was fine with it for years, but it slowly started manifesting thoughts of existentialism, consciousness, the nature of reality, and solipsism, among other deeply-unanswerable questions. It got to the point where almost immediately after the effects came on, I’d become paralyzed with fear over the fact that anything exists at all, but I kept using it because it helped my insomnia better than anything else.
I’ve only recently come out of that existential crisis after really having to work on myself to get back to where I was before that, which for the most part, I am. The only lingering change is that my firm atheism was shattered and I now find myself seeing the universe, consciousness and death very differently (largely in a good way.)
I want to get along with weed, but it’s just too much for me. I have ADHD, and all it does is make me think even more than I already do, as one errant thought will always send me down a cascading sequence of increasingly more terrifying philosophical possibilities about the universe and nature of infinity. Alcohol manifests itself as pure bliss and anti anxiety. It allows me to actually switch off for a few hours and then sleep.
Trust me, I wish I could love cannabis, but I just don’t think it’s worth the risk for me personally. I’ve never had a drug fuck me up so hard mentally (and I’ve previously experimented with psychedelics and dissociatives as a younger guy.) There’s something about THC specifically that fucks me up.
“I’d become paralyzed with fear over the fact that anything exists at all”…“I now find myself seeing the universe, consciousness and death very differently (largely in a good way.)”
It really does help your mind come up with some awesome ideas.
I don’t know if it was weed specifically or my education and life experiences, but I’m comfortable with the idea that we can’t know anything with absolute certainty. And since none of the questions about our existence can be answered (yet?) we get to be creative.
I can understand how it can be scary, though.
I now swing between the two, if I feel I’m having too much of one I’ll slide over to the other for a couple weeks to break the cycle.
I’m on a similar wavelength, however I’ve noticed my “couple nightly drinks” over time has turned (at times) into half a bottle.
Please do a better job managing your intake than I have, it was a hard look in the mirror that night.
There are countless ways we can find to cope. As long as it makes us happy and we can understand and accept its full effect on our lives, then i believe it’s great to have.
I started smoking weed again during the pandemic, and was probably just old enough to do that responsibly. I definitely wasn’t when i was younger and couldn’t handle my substances well.
Guitar playing and weed is the best.
As long as it makes us happy and we can understand and accept its full effect on our lives, then i believe it’s great to have.
bro lmao
“i do heroin everyday which is great as I understand its effects and it makes me happy”
please try to stop, man.
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I built a basic gym in the basement and started powerlifting. I get excited for every lift day and find it genuinely fun. None of my clothes fit anymore, but I feel incredible, all my aches and lower back pains from years of office work have disappeared. For anyone that’s remotely interested in weight training I would highly recommend picking up a squat rack and barbell, it will change your life
That’s awesome!
I’ve been powerlifting (just returning now after a major injury not caused by PL) for 5 years. Had you asked me 6 years ago if I’d ever see myself as a gym rat I’d have told you to fuck off.
And yet here I am, returning to the gym, having breakdowns having missed it so much and pulling far heavier weights off the floor after the first few returning sessions than I did for months in the beginning.
The body remembers, and I’m so here for it. My sleep has improved, my strength is returning quickly and steadily and I FEEL GREAT (and sore) after every session.
Powerlifting changed my life, gave me something to aim for and work at consistently, consistency is absolutely pivotal and has been the cause of immense gains that I was barely able to perceive due to the incremental nature of lifting.
It is the same energy I use to pull a heavy deadlift that I use to deal with the stress of life, I know exactly what I’m capable of and knowing that I can lift removedly heavy things at a mediocre effort really helps me mentally and emotionally in a crisis. Needless to say, prior to this injury I never hired removalists before.
Homebrew computers. I started with a 8 bit z80 and kept at it until I almost got a 80486 based homebrew working. I got it to run 3 bytes of program data before crashing one time. Computers are hard. I keep hoping someone else will find the missing piece to the puzzle but I ain’t getting any further with this otherwise. Homebrewers are on 286 and 386 stuff right now so they’ll get to 486 eventually.
I think most people would be surprised that computers barely work. It’s only thanks to a bunch of tricks that make them seem more reliable than they are.
What are some of those tricks? This seems interesting.
The most common ones are things like ECC and RAID setups.
I picked up baking soughdough loaves - like a lot of people…
I’ve managed to keep the habit! I’ve made a loaf once a week (pretty much) for almost 3.5 years. Which is a crazy number now that I’ve calculated it.
Feeding/kneading/shaping/baking just became part of my routine and it is now super easy to maintain, especially with the 1 a week low commitment. It makes the best sandwiches!
What is your process/recipe?
I’m no expert, please take the below with a pinch of salt (pun intended).
I keep my starter in the fridge and feed when I use it.
Make a levain: 60g starter (week old) 60g water 60g flour
Cover and leave that for 8 hours (remember to feed the starter and add back to the fridge).
Make the dough by mixing with the levain. Ratio is 1:2:3 (levain:water:flour): 10g salt 360g water (Lukewarm) 540g flour
I usually add the water, stir, add the salt, stir, add flour and mix by hand.
Cover and leave that 45min to an hour.
I then do a bit of a knead, then every 20mins do some coil folds. How many depends on how bothered I can be - between 1 and 5.
I give at least 2 hours from the last fold to proof, essentially at least 4 hours from making the dough. At this point dough should have doubled in size so you can also use that as a visual guide. How warm your kitchen is plays a bit part in how quick the proofing takes, hotter=quicker and colder=slower. So in winter I will wait a little longer.
Get the dough on your work surface and give it a quick shape. Let it bench rest for 5mins. During this time I get my proofing basket ready and make some space in the fridge.
Using flour, shape the dough and place in basket and then the basket in the fridge.
Leave this overnight.
Preheat oven to as high as it goes with Dutch oven inside.
Wait 30mins to heat up.
Get dough out the fridge and give it a brush to get some excess flour off.
Take the Dutch oven out and place the dough in the Dutch oven, score the dough, spray some water in the Dutch oven and place back in the actual oven.
Wait 30mins.
Turn oven down to 180 and take lid off the Dutch oven.
I then play it by eye on when to remove the loaf from the oven, usually 15-20mins. Depends how dark you like your crust.
Leave it to rest at least an hour before cutting into it. I’ve started leaving it another day and then cutting it all up and placing the slices in the freezer. Much easier cutting after a 1 day and this let’s me use the slices over the whole week.
It’s been a long time since I have looked at how to make soughdough loaves, so I probably have a few things wrong. However the above works for me. Let me know if you have any follow up questions and I’ll do my best to answer.
10g of salt? Jesus…
Disc golf, free to play on courses. Discs are much cheaper than golf clubs. The skill floor is low enough for most people to start having fun pretty quickly and the ceiling is high enough to have an entertaining to watch pro scene.
wargaming model painting (Warhammer 40k) and am still at it.
Being creative is an amazing hobby! I know some people that are into this and make some really cool stuff.
feels real good to finish a model and be like “yeah I did that”
Guitar and Ukulele, it’s been 4 months since I touched either one. But it’s because of a big RFP at work and not anything else.
Cool! I try to make sure i at least pick up my guitar and hammer out one some every day. Just a couple of minutes can make a shitty feel a little better.
I like that, what are you normally playing?
I mostly play a cheap acoustic Yamaha I bought about 20 years ago. But i also have a fender strat that is a lot of fun.
Musicwise, anything that i can sing along with and play. A lot of older rock n roll and country. But if i can get the chord progression down, then i want to learn it all.
That’s fantastic. Makes me want to pick my guitar up again. I won’t, not yet, but I want too!
Don’t know that I’d call it a hobby exactly, but a habit at least. Finally working out.
I needed something since I was always home and just felt weak. Got a set of adjustable dumbbells and a small lifting bench.
3 years later and they are still by my desk, used 3 times a week!
I would consider that a hobby. There are many ways we can find exercise. You’ve found one you can regularly incorporate into your life. Like a hobby!
I did the same thing. My wife had bought a set of dumbbells and a bench a couple of years before COVID, but I never used it until the lockdown when I got bored and started lifting. I still try to do it 5 days a week while doing yoga the other 2, but I do skip days if I have a lot going on.
Programming.
I don’t do it as much as a hobby anymore. But that’s because I switched careers and do it all day for work nowadays!
Used to read a little bit (~3-8 books a year). Now I read a lot (30+ books a year). Love escaping into a fantasy world
I learned how to design and build mechanical keyboards. My buddy and I are still at it and are working on our second keyboard that we hope to release publicly.
I’m still using our first prototype as my daily driver for the past 2 years.
Learned a lot about PCB manufacturing and embedded systems design.
Awesome, a hobby that produces something you can offer others is next level!
I played video games more often than usual. I still do when I have the time
