Bruce Blog

go fail at some hobbies

Like many others on Bear, I struggled for a long time with finding hobbies that stuck. There can be much despair and self hatred during the search process of the things that set your soul on fire.

Only in the past 2-3 years do I consider myself truly "having hobbies". My personal definition of hobbies has also drifted over time. I used to think a hobby had to be completely separated from your non-hobby life. I used to wholely ignore reading as a hobby as that's just something that is done everyday, I read my bills, I read text messages. How can reading a book count when I do that task everyday? This didn't stop me from reading 10-20 books a year however. I eventually realized that not everyone reads books in their free time. Some people I met haven't read a book since it was required in highschool. The doing of a task in your free time for your own enjoyment or just for the sake of doing, is the most basic definition of a hobby.

An old friend recently asked me how I found the hobbies I have now, as he was struggling to find his own. Through the course of the conversation I realized that I had tried many hobbies, and that by sampling so many I got better at finding what stuck for me. We thought it would be really cool if over the course of your life you kept a running list of all the failed hobbies you tried. This post comes out of that idea.

I have tried at various points learning foreign languages just for the sake of learning them, I didn't need to for work or for travel. A few languages I stuck with for a few months and got okay at, not conversationally fluent, but good enough to order food or ask for directions to a stranger in their tongue. But eventually I dropped them and stopped studying, at the time I didn't really know why.

I've also tried various creative outlets: calligraphy, sketching, making house music, musical instruments. But also with those experiences I just couldn't stick with them for very long. I wasn't excited to do it, they all felt like a chore or an item on a to-do list to cross off. "Do the dishes, take out the trash, spend 30 minutes practicing scales on the guitar, pay the bills, complete your daily dose of free time activity". Those hobbies that were a bad fit just felt wrong.

There was also a common thread of being adventurous. I thought scuba diving or downhill mountain biking would be fun to get into. I went down so many rabbit holes getting information and reading reviews on products. Planned itineraries and made equipment lists. But I didn't follow through.

It just felt too forced and artificial. It didn't set my brain on fire or get under my skin when I couldn't spend more time with it. And so I dropped them.

I've realized that sampling hobbies and failing at them is itself a great experience. It's okay, and mostly encouraged, to quit things that don't benefit you. Quitting is never a total loss. At the absolute minimum, you can say "well that was kind of cool but it's not for me". And that's awesome, now you know! Take the experience and let that inform your pivot to the next trial hobby. Jumping around is part of the fun, and leads to a better fit in the long run compared to forcibly staying with it at all costs. I highly recommend this book for more on trying, failing, and pivoting in search of satisfaction. There is also this book that is more about finding a career but has similar themes.

Enjoy my list of failed endeavors, I hope to keep adding to them.

hobby failures

In no particular order,

  1. calligraphy (did a few tutorials but didn't have the patience)
  2. growing orchids (this sort of worked, I kept a purple one alive for 3 years)
  3. downhill mountain biking (big rabbit hole on this one, recently a friend is getting into street biking and is much better at navigating this space)
  4. learning swedish, italian, japanese, german, spanish (yea one time I was convinced I was going to move to Sweden after undergrad and take a full time job there. Got reference textbooks, watched a few swedish shows but ultimately I didn't truly want that job)
  5. sketch drawing (I think charcoal art is so cool, )
  6. electric guitar (played for ~2 years in high school like every other teenage boy. I was not good, I could do a few riffs and "the fun parts" of songs but learning scales and music theory gave me the ick)
  7. piano (can't and didn't want to read sheet music lol)
  8. making EDM music (there are some terrible tracks floating around my harddrive that will never ever see the light of day again)
  9. building a social media website (12 year old me thought I could use a template from weebly and overtake facebook in world domination)
  10. collecting all the US quarters (I cashed them in for about 60 bucks)

the ones that eventually stuck

The first 4 I used to not consider "true hobbies", but now I do. They are things I enjoy for the sake of doing them and value their positive effects on my life.

Oldest to newest,

  1. reading books (mostly sci-fi, and classic lit)
  2. listening to music (I'm one of those "I listen to everything" people)
  3. playing video games
  4. cooking for myself and others
  5. gardening and tending houseplants and bonsai (Bonsai is pretty casual for me, I do enough so they look nice and stay alive, only a few minutes commitment a day )
  6. film photography (this one got me good. All my spare fun money and free time goes into this now)
  7. hiking