My free time is divided between audio books, video games, some TV, mostly YouTube, and learning bass guitar.

I try to skateboard once or twice a week in the summer, and snowboard at least twice a month in the winter.

I have a few motorcycles but those are more cheap transportation these days than a hobby.

The skating, snowboarding, and motorcycles are my “Screaming at the gods”. Dangerous activities that require total focus so everything else in life can be forgotten for a while.

Books and the bass are to keep my mind active and learn new things.

Reading. It’s always nice to stumble into a new book while browsing around the store. I generally go for science fiction or fantasy but really just go for what interests you.

Mechanical design and 3D printing. I’m mechanical engineer so it goes well with the hobby. I often end up making simple tools for things needed around the house. Making glow in the dark tooth brush stands that fit neatly in a sink nook, coat hangers, and replacement parts for knobs that break can help save you a little money (if you ignore the obvious cost of the 3D printer and filament).

Building Gundam model kits is also quite entertaining. I’m getting close to finishing all the models I want though so it might be a waning interest.

Archery is one of my latest interests. It can be rather cheap in the long run because every piece of equipment is reusable with proper care. It also overlaps neatly with my 3D printing hobby as I make quivers and vambraces to save a little more cash.

Lastly is video gaming. I go on just about any platform and even pirate but lately I’ve been buying DS/3DS cartridges because there’s something fun about the ritual of inserting a cartridge to original hardware to start a game. It makes it like you’re invested in the title you have unlike scrolling around a library list and launching it from there.

Birding. Gets you outside and is healthy for mind and body. To get started, download the Merlin app (*or whoBIRD on FDroid) and walk outside. If you start getting into it, maybe buy or borrow some cheap binoculars. Meet up with a local Audubon group for a social outing with some generally chill people. And your observations can help gather data for science using eBird from the Cornell lab of ornithology.

I garden poorly and do canning! I got into gardening because last year (technically two years ago) my mother for purim gave me a bag of things and one was some san marzano like seeds. So last year’s growing season I planted those and it worked! I can because we use to can growing up. I’ve been canning before the garden but they’re a natural fit.

Cheap:
Felting is unexpectedly fun but probably not rest of your life fun.

Mid: Cooking, delving into other cultures dishes, learning to replicate a meal you eat out. If can be fun, but has an upfront learning curve. on the upside, you need to eat anyway.

Expensive:
RC drones/Planes are fun and get you outside.

My passion is horses and horseback riding, but it’s dangerous and expensive so I don’t recommend it to folks unless they have money and are into taking risks lol.

I love cross stitching and writing as well.

Gardening (veges!), musical instruments (currently guitar), vidja games, cooking, bread baking, self-hosting, paddle boarding, wood working, and a life-long hobby of trying new hobbies.

There are thousands of hobbies out there. You never know which ones will click with you. Try as many of them as you can! If something looks interesting, go for it! Look for the least expensive entry point. If it requires equipment, rent, borrow, or go super cheap. Unless its safety equipment… Then don’t go cheap.

A fine example is guitar: don’t spend more than $100 on a used acoustic. If you stick with guitar long enough, you’ll eventually be able to make that shitty guitar sing while also understanding exactly how it’s holding you back so you’ll know what to look for when upgrading to something intermediate.

Also, “earning the right” to get better equipment is a badass feeling.

Apply that to any hobby that requires investment. If you invest a small amount of money and realize the hobby is not right for you, you didn’t lose much but gained a lot of insight about yourself.

Hiking - got into it because I was in the scouts as a kid. I found it boring and exhausting and onerous as a kid, until I went on my first backpacking trip. For me at least, feeling committed to a multiday journey from A to B kind of removed the distractions and what-ifs, and allowed me to really sink into the experience of being outside like nothing else had. Going backpacking is my number one trick for becoming a happier human - exercise, in nature, good circadian rhythm, disconnected from the internet.

Climbing. Got into it because I was looking for friends to go backpacking with in college, and they were into climbing, too. While backpacking can feel very relaxing, climbing feels very in-the-moment. A difficult route will challenge you in any number of ways - physically, as your lungs burn and your forearms start giving out; mentally, as you try to figure out a sequence of moves to make it up while managing the risk of falling; and emotionally, as you work through your fear of falling off and balance your mind between focusing on the task at hand and being open to all possibilities. You develop great friendships, since you tend to get comfortable with someone you are trusting your life with pretty quick. There is always something new to learn, as there are many disciplines from gym to outdoor, rock to ice to aid to mountain, and boulder to sport to trad. And it takes you to amazing places - sure, you can plan a trip to Chamonix or Thailand to go skiing or hang out on the beach. But when you make plans with a climbing partner, you actually buy the plane tickets. You fly in and immediately depart from the normal tourist circuit, getting a much better feel for life for the people in the areas you are travelling in. Then you show up in your destination, and you don’t just look at the beautiful scenary - you are part of it. You don’t just look at the mountain - you are perched on a tiny ledge on the side of it, watching the birds hover next to you while your partner cruxes out on the next pitch above.

Canyoneering. Similar to climbing, but easier to do with lots of friends of various skill levels. While climbing is often a fairly serious endeavor with defined goals, a canyon just has a single general goal that the whole group works on together: get out of the canyon. Thus, canyons tend to be a lot more fun and social, and often involve silly shenanigans like throwing a bag over a wall to have a rope to climb, or standing on a friend’s shoulders while another lets you grab their foot to lower yourself over an edge.

DIY. I dunno, I just intrinsically like the idea of being able to build and fix all my own shit. Sometimes this feels less like a hobby and more like a job, but it is hard to beat the satisfaction of finishing a project that then makes your life better every time you use it.

board games, not only its nice way to get to social gatherings, but theres bunch of games with solo mode. So instead of spending tons of hours on your computer you can play some board game

I speak ill of foreign countries’ presidents (so many choices currently)

Dude I have too many. You asked for it:

• Balisong flipping
• Begleri
• Yoyos
• Airsoft
• Watching hockey (go Ducks) and do a little ice skating
• Archery
• Rock climbing
• Hiking/backpacking
• Scuba diving
• Geocaching
• Kite flying
• Rubiks cubing
• CS:GO
• Linux and FOSS stuff
• Other tech related things
• 3D printing
• Good quality pens and pencils
• Lockpicking
• Disc golf
• knives and metallurgy

Barebow archery, penspinning, homelab / home network, misc. coding projects I rarely finish.

Penspinning started as a kid as a selfstimming activity since I annoyed people with bouncing leg and table drumming. Looking back, I don’t know why it took 30 years to get ADHD diagnosis.

Barebow archery started by doing a team activity intro archery and I noticed it immediately cured my chronic shoulder pain. It turned out to be inferred pain from Infraspinatus, not shoulder per se.

Homelab/network just stem from my desire to have a carefully controlled environment due to deep distrust in… well, everything.

Coding projects usually start by me having a specific need or problem, then I start fixing it, and generally end up over-engineering it.

Archery, penspinning and coding are relatively cheap hobbies. Homelab/network doesn’t need to be expensive either. All of these CAN absolutely be money sinks, especially homelab/networks and archery, but starting out is affordable.

Photography. I bought a second hand camera body, a couple of adapters and have been building up a roster of cheap old 70s-80s lenses. I can bring my camera whenever I go out, or go on more specific photography walks. It makes me look at things more closely, and therefore enjoy them more.

Whenever I’ve brought my camera to events and gatherings, the response has been very positive and people really enjoy the photos being “artistic” and “dream-like” (on account of the imperfect vintage lenses and my often poor manual focusing).

It’s been a fun journey of discovering what lenses I most enjoy using. For me it’s been either 40-45mm for walking around snapshots or 180-200mm for portraiture.

Maybe I’ll get some more modern gear some day, but then I’ll know exactly what I want, and have the skill to use it to the fullest.

Archery.

Fursuiting is something I have very alowly been getting into, as in have had 2 chances to do it safely. Wouldn’t recommended unless interested/curious, furry or not, and you don’t have any health issues stopping you from doing it. Suit heads get hot, airflow can sometimes be an issue, and vision can be a big problem. It’s why I recommend fursuiting’s cousin cosplay more for more people.

I got my head/paws ( separate purchases ) because I was going with a college club I’m a part of to an anime con and have wanted to do this for a long time, as a furry. Got a tail at that con. Seller told me he just finished that tail that morning, so I got lucky. Still learning my limits in suit, especially with regards to vision.

Thought about going to my cities local pride parade with my suit, but didn’t feel like getting heat stroke. Also thought about going to the local comic convention in suit with my non-furry non-cosplayer dad, but I didn’t know it was happening the same weekend as the parade, so I missed my opportunity because I looked it up the Monday after, curious when it was gonna be.

I have also been in the process of trying to get back into writing. Specifically by rewriting/updating some old fanfiction. I know a few people who think fanfiction is nothing but slop, bit I absolutely disagree. It’s no different from fan art: another way to show appreciation for a show/book/franchise/whatever you like.

Kinda really got into fanfiction writing back in 11th/12th grade and started getting back into it more now because I think more people should appreciate and write it because it’s fun and it’s rewarding to read in general, fanfiction or otherwise.

This comment excludes the normal stuff ( gaming and watching shows ).