I know the chaos of adult life like work, bills and routines… I started feeling like I lost touch with the things that made me feel like me. I recently picked up going to the gym as a hobby again and it’s helped me slow down and enjoy the present. It is just me?


32 comments

  1. Rafting. Not cheap to pick up but I’ve liked the challenge and the feeling of floating down a river. 

    I’ve also played just enough golf to accept invitations to maintain certain relationships. 

  2. Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. It offers comradery, is very physically demanding and mentally stimulating, and it forces you to take care of your body if you want to continue to practice it.

  3. Shooting range time. I don’t get there as often as I once did. But when I do go to the range, I’m Very present. Between the adrenaline produced by loud bangs and the joy of shorting well, I walk away feeling good.

  4. I am trying to get back into hiking again. I used to go a ton as a kid but my Dad moved away and I prefer to go with others. But a few friends mentioned they were also wanting to go more so we’ve started going and that’s been nice!

    I also didn’t lose touch with it but playing D&D has been a hobby for a while and that’s been a great way to stay in touch with friends and reconnect and enjoy the adventure unfolding.

  5. DnD helped a lot. I grew up and was always into fantasty and stuff. I also love improv.

    DnD helped reconnect with both those aspects of my life amid the chaos of kids.

  6. Music. I never lost it. I went to school for it and then chose not to pursue it as a career till recently.

  8. Not just you brother. I have to get out in the garage and work on building something at least once a week. I enjoy woodworking very much. It gets the creativity flowing. Forces me to focus on precision and not lopping of a finger. It’s my reset button. Plus I get to make cool stuff for my daughters and other family members. Even home improvement projects tick that box in the dead of winter when my garage is freezing. This also has a bonus of making the wife happy.

  9. Picking up an old hobby from when I was a kid. 

    Playing piano for me….don’t do it often but would like to more

  10. Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. I started at 50, go to the gym most days to fight with my friends, and lost a bunch of weight and blood pressure.

  12. Mountain biking.

    As athletic as you want it to be, as challenging as you want it to be, outdoors, fun, etc.

  13. Getting back into watching Wrestling, started by watching the older stuff from my childhood during lockdown and now it’s on Netflix it’s regular for me

  16. Project vehicles- I’ve always had some sort of “toy” I would tinker with. Nothing high dollar, all within budget etc etc. Those took a back seat once “life” happened. Here recently I was able to squirrel away some $$ and I’m able to start looking around for a complete shitbox to bomb around in lol.

    Road trips- Mostly remote places, off the beaten path nothing extreme. But heading to places to just get away for awhile.

  19. Rivers in the summer, ice hockey in the winter. They feed my soul and for very different reasons.

    Hockey gets my heart rate up and is very much a sense of community, belonging and inclusion. I’m in the “zone” and am able to be fully away from my normal life distractions. I get to be an athlete superhero for an hour a week.

    Whitewater is my connection with nature and oneness with the river. I have lots of time to simply be present and be alone with my thoughts.

  21. Reading, painting warhammer and lifting. Felt like a complete package of brain/brawn/tossing money into the fire and regreting my decision making process (there none).

  23. trail running.

    it’s helped kill me ego, given me long amounts of time along to think, and really helped me be more present in my every day life.

  24. Reading for leisure, especially fiction. That’s a muscle that I let atrophy for far too long.

  25. Just going out with friends.

    I joined a meetup who play board games through a friend, and then I joined this other group that does trivia fairly regularly. So just time away from my bachelor pad where I’m staring at the walls really helps.

  26. I began learning guitar from scratch at 35. Changed my life. Now i’m learning to paint and play piano. F’n amazing. I’ll have these for the rest of my life and i love it. I also took up hiking, then backpacking, then mountaineering in my 40’s and that’s been the shit!

  27. Started at 30 in road cycling, what a joy! I hate to go to the gym and wanted to get fit, amazing result in short time and great sport to spend so much hours outside!

  28. Snowboarding and motorcycles make me feel young but I’ve gotten back into taking some weekend camping trips this year and it’s really been like how you describe.

    So nice to just slow down and just enjoy a moment in time out in nature

  29. I started riding enduro motorbike. I grew up on farms and outdoors and I’ve been stuck in a urban area most of my adult life. Getting outside, getting hurt a bit, getting dirty, sweaty, tired and shooting the shit afterwards has changed me. I met a lot of great people as well.

  30. Lego and electronics. I grew up playing with Lego. We don’t haves lot of money so we had a box of various pieces that I had to use a lot of creativity with to eek out as many varsied builds as possible. I knew each piece and how many I had of each. As I got a bit older I started being interested in fiddling with other small machines and electronics.

    But as adult all of that fell by the wayside as life and adulting took over. But I have now, in my 50s, bought an Arduino set and some Lego Technic sets and have really enjoyed a sene of the same kind of creativity I had back then, finding ways to make small interesting Arduino controlled Lego creations. It has reconnected me with my innner child and past childhood

  31. Scuba diving – just got back into the hobby after 9 years. One of the reasons I stopped in the first place was because I relied on the local shops for drop in dives. We would go to the same places every week. I got bored of it and went out less and less. My basic open water was also limiting me from going to some of the more interesting places. So I’m taking my advaced this weekend. Then I’ll be able to do more trips abroad, liveaboards, and more local sites.

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