You mean sleeping? That never stopped being interesting to me.
So many of the usual, like many people I’m sure: drawing, writing, making bad websites, playing video games…
But also just laying on the ground and listening to the birds chirping. Starting at nothing and just letting my mind wander, for no purpose at all.
Had a second take until I saw the community name, was waiting for the downturn
Yes, I’m now buying rare vinyls and CDs! I’m waiting for a vinyl that just passed costumes, who knows how much I’m going to pay, fuck.
Drawing, I was actually good at it.
Writing for me. I mean I don’t know if I’m any good at it, but I like it.
Who cares, do what makes you happy. Capitalism has tricked us. You don’t have to be good at something to do it. Not everything has to contribute economic value.
I tried writing. The process of writing fiction, of the characters coming alive in front of me and telling me the story they want to tell was fascinating. I didn’t expect that. I’d come to section of dialog and I didn’t need to write it, it was no effort at all because the characters were just talking to each other. Sure, I did the earlier work of defining them and creating backstory, but once that was in place, they took over. I’d make a mistake, and I knew it was a mistake because the character would tell me, “I wouldn’t say that. That’s not me.”
Once, I finished about four pages of dialog between three characters, and when I opened the file again, it was gone. I was devastated, because I didn’t think I could do it as well again. Fortunately, it wasn’t gone, Libre Writer was just formatting the pages strangely.
It doesn’t matter whether anyone else reads it or thinks it’s good. The process of writing is fulfilling in itself, and well worth the time spent.
My younger self loved computers and programming and any love I had for that died after 5 years on the job.
I’m 15 years on the job now. 😭
Younger me took a stance. I needed to pursue my passions of Art and Videogames. Fast forward 15 years and now I’m an Art Lead for games at a company that is heavily invested in AI and doesn’t seem to know what the fuck they’re doing ATM. If I’m laid off, I doubt I’ll be able to land another job despite a good resume and playing games remind me of work.
I’m sorry to hear that. I don’t want anything to do with AI, so I imagine my current job will be my last job in the industry, too. I hope you can ride out the bubble at your current place!
Sad to hear this. A close friend of mine loves drawing and works in the games industry, and is really eager to move into an art role. I’ve suggested he keeps his drawing as his hobby in the worry he will lose his love for it, but he subscribes to the mantra of “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” I guess it gives him hope that there is a job he can work towards that will make him happy.
I switched to the “work to live, not live to work” mantra many many years ago. I try to find the little joys in work but it’s not my source of happiness.
“Do what you love for a career and you’ll never work”
“I hate my hobbies and want to patch potholes instead.”
Do what you love, they said, and you’ll never do a day of work!
However, even though I do still do tech stuff around the house, it just doesn’t have that same feeling.
I was so happy to rediscover that playing in the woods and outdoorsing was super rad and exactly what I needed.
You ain’t lying. I recently started to look at trees the way I used to. Like I got so many good climbing trees by my job. I might mess around and get caught hanging out in them one of these days.
This happened to me when I got glasses lol. It was like all the trees suddenly got the HD upgrade.
Omg yeah you just unlocked an ancient memory. It was like, you can see the individual leaves?? its so beautiful and dynamic, especially on a windy day
Board games and little plastic army men.
Yes when my kids got to the age of playing at parks, I rediscovered swings & monkey bars & gymnastics & acrobatics & what a therapeutic rediscovery it has been.
My younger self was a fool. STEM, power and dominance should have been my only interests.
Relevant username.
Idk what you want, I went the idealist, softie, be a game dev route, suffering for it. Would have been better off ifnI was like evil.
I doodled often as a kid. From little characters drawn on my notes or the corners of class work (after I’d finished completing them), to silly comic strips I’d make at home, to art class where I had a knack for still lifes, it was a casual interest that I really enjoyed.
By high school, though, I had friends who were incredible at manga-style drawing. I could never make drawings in that style, so I thought I couldn’t compete. I’d also been bullied a lot in childhood and was terrified to draw for school projects if I knew they’d be displayed around the class room, so I didn’t even try. I didn’t consider myself an artist at all, and had managed to internalize the idea that I couldn’t draw.
Then I became an adult and realized there’s nothing wrong with being unable to draw in a particular style, even if it’s popular. I began embracing my own style. I also began branching into painting, and before long I redid my childhood bedroom to create a different season on each wall, complete with a light blue ceiling full of realistic-looking clouds.
I’ve since become known for making art at the places I worked. At a craft store I taught classes and a coworker made a fake nametag for me as the “Official Doodler” of the store. Then my brother had kids and by the age of 2, one of his boys was enthralled by me drawing on a magna-doodle. He would ask me to draw particular things over and over again, watching every stroke I did, then copying me until he developed an amazing artistic skill in his own right. Today his classmates ask him, “How did you draw that?” and it annoys him, because it’s become so easy as to be intuitive and he doesn’t understand how they don’t get it.
My parents recently sold my childhood home. My old bedroom was a selling point - the new owners fell in love with it, and have already decorated the room to go along with the “seasons” theme. They’ll be turning it into a nursery. :)
So yes, 100%, go back to your childhood interests! You never know what skills might be lying dormant because you haven’t practiced them in a while. It doesn’t matter if it’s good or not at first, because if you’ve got a passion and you practice enough, you might surprise yourself with what you can accomplish.
Throwing crabapples in the road to watch cars run over them? I’m not sure it’s a good idea
If you can rope another adult friend into it, you can just both take it in turns to run over crabapples and then there’s no worries.
You know, I started a comment telling you to go for it because it won’t hurt the cars, but I’d definitely think I ran over a small animal and it might lead to people stopping to check and endangering themselves…
Okay, given that the benefits of adulthood are being able to reenter the world of your childhood hobbies with the foresight of more experience, I say you throw crabapples onto train tracks.
With more money, and more new accessible tech and access to information, it’s great!
Slowly rediscovering my fascination for radio communications. Meshtastic and Meshcore are running, dusted off an old analog scanner that I kept from my cb radio days in '97, and a RTL-SDR is on it’s way. Good times :)
Hear, hear. I’ve got the HF bug and deliver a specific feeling of joy when I QSO the farthest I can at a given power and antenna configuration.
I got licensed in my 30s after wanting to when I was a kid. My farthest contact is 15000km from the US to Australia running 20W into a dipole hanging from a tree.
Wild. Was that SSB or CW? From some time I spent in New Mexico a couple of years ago I managed to hit Malaysia on 100W SSB. I was floating!
This was SSB on 20 meters. My next farthest contacts are more like 5000 miles down to Chile and Argentina, same 20W G90 and dipole. I am completely lacking Asia and Africa though
