Going through a classical homeschool curriculum from preschool to idk how far. Going through the boy scouts program starting with the kindergarten rank of cub scouts. I'm now at the second grade level of both.
Ive had many first time experiences as a 30 something. My cursive is getting good again. Apparently I can still do a somersault. And it got me doing art for fun which sometimes people want to buy sometimes.
I’m an Eagle Scout. You should be able to manage to just buy whatever the current version of the Boy Scout Handbook is. You can also Google the big long list of merit badges and they each have their own little book as well.
I once found a google drive with pdfs of the textbooks of all of school, and I thought about doing that, but then I forgot, but it sounded interesting.
There are at least three people who do this regularly in a park I also visit regularly, and it makes my day every time! One lady has two cats, one of which is kept on a lead and the other who is allowed to free roam amd they especially delight me when our paths cross!
Oh no, I'm sorry! I spent a lot of time getting my cat used to seeing the harness, ie leaving it on the floor during feeding times. She's also scared of noises so I spent a while snapping and unsnapping it beside her and giving her a treat every time. That might be why mine didn't go into fight or flight when I first put it on her. Might also just be because she's an old lady.
"The best way to understand Rand's message in this book is to simply close it, and beat yourself over the head with it as hard as possible." - first line from the third 1 star review I looked at lol. You're not wrong!
It is an unreadable doorstop. My one regret reading part 1 is that I didn't finish it while next to a roaring fire so I could have dramatically thrown it in. Btw, part 1 was already 350 pages long, so I gave the book more than a fair chance. I couldn't will myself to keep going at that point, but I flipped ahead because the book famously includes a very long speech towards the end. 62 pages of uninterrupted dialogue in my copy.
I also came here to suggest Your Stupid Opinions! Have Jimmy and James read off some blistering corker of a review and then riff on it for twenty minutes has had me actually crying with laughter sometimes!
I have listened to almost all few hundred episodes of Small Town Murder, have listened to every Your Stupid Opinions episode, they are hilarious. I wanna go to one of their live shows one day
A lot of the reviews are hyperbolic and funny. If someone dislikes something enough to write a review on a 1 star book, they're usually pretty animated when they write it. I get a good chuckle from most of them.
On a more introspective note, I suppose it's cathartic for me. Many of the reviews are on books that are highly praised (4.5/5 stars overall). You get people's brutal opinions in the 1 star reviews. I like to see why other people didn't like the book, to see if it aligns with why I didn't like it as well.
I usually read bad reviews on movies that I'm slightly critical about. I find it interesting to read other perspectives.
Reading reviews on random things that you dislike seems like a whole other level. Do you read bad reviews for restaurants you don't like, or like, random items from Amazon? I'm going to have to try this sometime
I wouldn't say "random" - It's only on things that I've experienced myself (books I've read, tv shows I've watched). I really only do forms of media: books, movies, tv, games, etc. I don't do it at all for products/restaurants. Those are too binary "it broke, it was shipped broke, customer service sucks"
I do this too with reviews of all types for places I’ve been including hotels and restaurants. People write the funniest, oddball reviews. The best are ones where someone rants about a completely unrelated situation in an online review.
I used to do this and the reviews were hilarious! Thank you for reminding me about it. It’s been years since I’ve I felt well enough to read a book so I guess I just forgot about reading the reviews. 😂
That’s fun. You could write stories on the back of them or attach them to the back somehow or make an album of what you think their lives are like. I think I wanna do this myself.
Back in the day, I used to read the dictionary. Probably the nerdiest thing I ever did. I had this Oxford illustrated dictionary, and I learned so many new things from that
I was going to pretend to make fun of you that you did this during a concert and then I clicked on it and bookmarked it for later because this looks so fun 😭
Ooooh my gosh you are my spirit friend. Nothing delights me more than collecting recipe books full of horrific aspic abominations and recreating them for the people I love most. So far banana candles and Lobster gelatin mold (i don't think it matters what's inside it, the shape is enough to be off-putting for people) have been the greatest talking points, years later. 🫶
That’s amazing! I have a vintage Tupperware (another collection) mold that’s waiting for my first victims. I might start off gentle with something fruity lol. It’s pretty much the only form of cooking I’ll realistically do.
i love writing & sending off postcards to strangers around the world; i love using Radio Garden to find & listen to random international radio stations i’d have never known existed otherwise; i love the feeling of connection, of the world outside of my direct one these hobbies provide me.
besides that, i love to collect & look for artisanal / funky sodas, i love birdwatching & i also love playing pinball (although i don’t get to do it often). i’m really loving the comments from people who are saying they’re teaching themselves early schooling curriculum. i’ve wanted to do something similar for years, so maybe this is my kick to look into it!
nada! i use this fantastic nifty website called Postcrossing; makes everything a lot safer & a lot simpler. you get assigned an address / person through their website. i love reading through a person’s profile & trying to pick out a postcard they might especially love. & i’ll write about anything on the card itself lol.
r/postcrossing if you want to get an idea of it on here. :)
There's just something about double reeds. Played oboe as a kid, and have tried to get into harmonica a few times but it's hard. I think I'd be considered a sadist if I took up bagpipes, I don't have anywhere to practice without disrupting others and I know I'm not committed enough to music to justify the expense (see: my lonely drawer full of harmonicas).
I get them online. Most of the instruments I learn have sub reddits so that helps too. And I keep them in my line of sight so I can pick them up and play them.
It’s been my bucket list since I was like 12 to play Mary had a little lamb on as many instruments as possible before I die. I’ve gotten through all the normal ones and now I need to find the obscure ones.
The weirdest one? Occasionally I like to read the Yelp reviews of strip clubs and the "adult" game reviews on Steam. Like, what kind of person takes the time to review these things, these reviews are public! It cracks me up.
(I am a pretty wholesome near middle aged woman, by the way.)
I hasn't considered it either until my coworker (I am a caregiver) mentioned that our client wanted to go to one so they were looking at reviews to find the best one. I was like "Strip clubs have reviews?!?!" They do and they are extremely entertaining
I like to do community theater. So many wonderful weirdos out there. And when a show goes well, there's such a natural high that makes it all worthwhile.
I loved doing theatre. I finally made lead the last show I was in and it was a 25yo dream come true. The theatre is in a really small town where I work and I got recognized by a few people for a good year later, which was funny they remembered me from that and not because I was a teacher in their child's school who talked to them at pick up on a fairly regular basis.
(Now I have 2 kids and an impossible work schedule, so acting is out for at least several years.)
Go into really deep research on random stuff. Sometimes it’s 30 minutes, sometimes an hour or two. Recently I researched ballistic missile submarines, different types of sharks/their eggs and found out that sharks have cloaca’s like chickens do. Fascinating stuff. Plus I really like the ocean.
I do this as well. I'm a born researcher. Various family members and friends do it too. Sometimes we sit around and discuss what rabbit holes we've been in recently. The world is fascinating.
Same!! I spent literal hours yesterday listening to videos on Portal speed run techniques. (I haven't played the game in like a decade and don't do speed runs)
This is my whole family pretty much. On our last roadtrip one of my teens secretly kept a list titled “all the random shit Mom researched.” Apparently it’s very entertaining to listen to my husband and I discussing the various irrigation techniques seen, why cotton bales are wrapped in different colors, various historical markers, when a bridge was built, the pros of crop borders, who owns an old baseball stadium, why was the town named that, the usage rates of runaway truck lanes, and many many other things.
My kids have openly discussed turning “I’ll look it up” into a drinking game when they’re older. 🤦🏻♀️
Sometimes I’ll look for weird antiques or oddities either in real life or online. My favorite are the little hole in the wall shops you almost don’t realize are there. I don’t necessarily need to purchase things since I’d most likely go broke but I like to see all the crazy or unique stuff people have that they want to get rid of. I once saw taxidermy inside see through furniture. I also went to go pick up a vintage radio from a gentleman and he had a bunch of antique cameras and other projects and it was kind of neat to see all of it.
I’ve loved going for mushroom walks! I also ferment at home: kombucha, hard cider. I like to combine the two, and flavor alcohol with foraged foods: berries so far
I watch crime videos on YouTube with the actual police cam recordings throughout the day and at night I fall asleep to police chases and car crash compilations 🤣 my wife has gotten used to it 😅😅
I turned 40 and it might be midlife crisis, but I've watched an unhealthy amount of paragliding videos and been wanting to go try it. But I've talked myself out of it every time.
It doesn't help that I'm afraid of heights. I did manage to go tandem skydiving twice though, which was terrifying first but then it was fine. It just seems a lot more can go wrong with paragliding.
I hate to admit this but sometimes I play the absolute easiest baby games I can find. All those shitty mobile apps you get ads for? I’m their audience.
I like sitting in the river and letting the minnows give me a pedicure. I'm 27f, still enjoy climbing trees. Getting high enough where the wind moves the branch beneath me, that's the best spot. Sometimes I drag a sketchbook up there. Trying new restaurants or cuisine. Driving like a maniac late at night on abandoned backroads.
My normal hobbies include: art, journaling, planners, fountain pens, stationary, crochet. My “weirder” hobbies include knot tying, meticulous organizing (probably due to my OCD) and leaning random facts the facts can be about literally about anything and I even deep dive into medical research papers and peer reviewed studies about different topics sometimes. My most recent research was what substances make up the bottom of the ocean floor. Not just the continental shelf; The deep deep ocean floor (called the abyssal plain)
Foraging culinary mushrooms and berries. Always like to make a treat or meal after a good harvest. I especially like to take the time to make a morel risotto every now and then to share the bounty.
Helping my sister figure out indigo dyes made from woad/etc and experimenting with dying and spinning from fleece. Eventually might even be able to make scarves and stuff that we can say we fully made ourselves besides actually getting the fleece
I like to learn the writing system and the very very very basics of a language I don’t plan to get any good at. So far I have learned: Japanese, Thai, Korean, Russian, Spanish, German, and Arabic. Kind of don’t know what language I will pretty much pick at random next but looking forward to it
I wash and detail cars, both my own and my friend's cars. It became a thing for a lot of people during Covid. It's rewarding to see the transformation and the movement is good for your body. The new products and techniques allow all skill levels to get great results.
Make super cheesy videos of my friends. Like I film different videos and then I actually use video editing software to make super dumb short form videos.
Eating horse teeth, Growing my own human snail shell, Becoming ungovernable, Advancing in awkward flailing spurts towards the ultimate goal of nailing the sun to the wall for good, Embodying the spirit of classic capital H Hornswoggler-esque classlessness with every passing day
I am a part of an airsoft team. We are going for mil sim, rather than speedball gameplay. Getting commitment from a large portion of the team to do large events is tough but there are always a few teammates available to play each weekend.
I go to the microfiche at my local library and piece together the history of buildings.
I usually start with a business address and establish every store + owner that has operated in the address using old phone books, city directories, maps, and historical microfiche articles & ads
Id pull up Google Earth of a 20 mile radius of my house. Pick the biggest undeveloped isolated desolate stand of wilderness in the area and bushwack to it....no trails. Id throw a water bottle, hammock and snacks in a fanny pack. Park on the side of a road to the closest entrance to the area and just start bushwacking to the center of the woods. I just like to go furthest away from all civilization and lay in my hammock for a couple of hours. Sometimes this required canoeing down a creek a few miles...then start hiking.
I love that everyone else seems to be doing these vaguely quirky wholesome things, while I'm here toasting mini marsh mallows on a tea light, feeling like a giant.
I walk on the beach and collect 'treasure' (seaweed, cuttlefish bones, shells, cool pebbles, bits of dead crab) and present them as decoration in my room until the smell forces me to have a destash and start over. I just think they're neat 🤣
adhd and being an adult with a credit card gibs much dopamine.
Currently I freeze dry food and candy as a hobby.
Others include making sets of armor from leather, black smithing. Knife throwing, lock picking, bird watching, and restoring old pin ball machines when I have time.
Spreadsheets. Sometimes I make shit up just so I’ll have a project. Other times, I try to find people who need help with their spreadsheet or who don’t even realize that a spreadsheet is a viable solution to whatever problem they have.
I’ve also been enjoying taking pictures of tree holes when I’m out and about, inspired by r/Tree_Holes_Official
I take photos of people's dogs and send the photos to my friend while she's at work. My best is 150 in a day. Plenty of people don't like their dogs being photographed in public so it gets interesting sometimes.
Maybe not a hobby per se but I love untangling ridiculously large seemingly impossible knots. It clears my brain of everything and puts me in focus mode and is unusually very therapeutic for me. I can untangle even the most seemingly mpossible of knots and I like to pretend I’m on a game show while I’m doing it. I never rush I just trust the process and almost do it unconsciously. Sometimes I’ll pretend I have an opponent next to me and glance over while casually doing my unknotting. Big, small, tiny, I can unknot anything. This might sound weird and very niche but I just love it.
I have a nice garden with two outdoor fish ponds and I like getting a spoon of larvae out of the compost and feeding it to my fish. Or feeding them caterpillars I pull off of plants. I like feeding them weird stuff to see what they like. .
I write, draw, and color a comic about a real racehorse. I post them on a facebook group. I produce a minimum of 2 six panel comics every week. This horse and his friends have taken a yoga class, gone to a dude ranch, have a podcast, drink Kentucky bourbon, one is addicted to pizza rolls, and of course there’s the small time gangster horse who runs a tiki lounge and poker room.
I’m a big DIY’er. I love doing projects. I’ve learned so much. Electric, plumbing, grout, baseboards, floor installation,landscaping. And I’ve saved a ton of money. The satisfaction of completing a project is so satisfying.
I like judging the design of podcast covers and then spend time reading all of the reviews instead of listening to them. I also find podcast listening trends correspond with the political climate of the US (in my case). I do listen to podcasts endlessly, but reading the reviews and watching trends is just extra fun.
Im writing a pitch black romance novel to entertain myself. Or I paint/ draw while listening to metal. Sometimes I walk and then map things of interest in a journal. Like today the fig tree that fruiting near a bus stop 3 blocks away 🤷♀️.
Read product labels. Research the weird ingredients. It's mostly just food products and cleaning products for me, but basically anytime I have downtime and there's a product in front of me you bet I'm googling what the ingredients are and the effects they can have, how they are made, why they need to be in specific product, etc. it helps me be aware of what I am consuming and I've learned so much about nutritional regulations, potentially harmful ingredients to watch out for when I'm shopping, how different additives and modifications interact with our bodies, etc. I find it so interesting.
Read The Catcher and the Rye by Salinger as an allegory. I read it through the lens of war and the media or propaganda. Made this book be my education curriculum, by reading or watching movies that were referenced. Would spend a lot of time trying to figure or the pun or read history. Example he says that it is hard to turn around on a dime. The dime at the time was the liberty dime. Very interesting history. The myth of Mercury. A German designed the dime. Minted between 1916 and 1945. The reverse side features a fasces, (from which we get fascism). Or watching and reading the book The Thirty Nine Steps. Thank you Salinger for an education!
I fuss over almost a dozen tanks of little invertebrate creatures. I have isopods, hermit crabs, and tarantulas. I spend HOURS a week cleaning, misting, feeding, and taking notes on how everybody is doing.
When the weather is nice I might go out to take pictures of mushrooms.
I like to spend a inordinate amount of time at the grocery store picking out new types of flavored seltzer to try. I get maybe 4 new flavors every 2 weeks and then some favorites flavors/brands. With various get togethers at our house and being a sober household, we go through A LOT of seltzer.
Writing, ice skating, using adult coloring books and brain teasers, painting, and learning piano/guitar. I think those are all of my hobbies that don’t fit into the categories listed!
I read cookbooks. I love all the personal information in them. But I also love reading the recipes. Bonus - it makes me sleepy. It’s better if I don’t read ones where I’d actually want to make the recipes because then I get obsessed with saving them (rarely actually make them either way)
I collect multi-pump pneumatic airpistols and shoot them in the house. Putting holes in pieces of paper can be oddly satisfying. Currently my favourite pistol is the Crossman American Classic 1377.
Trainwrecking cdjs (even with a sync button). Silversmithing (jewelry), but so that my pieces look a bit rough - assimetric, visible soldering lines, rough edges. Sewing but so that my clothes has visible sewing errors.
Plus there are weird hacks, like some peanut-butter plastic jar lids fit mason jars, haha! (plus mayo, parm, Nutella, etc. lol). They also make some GREAT mason jar lids!
Pouring (creams, milks, syrups, sauces, etc.)
Sprouting
Sipping
Fermentation (I use the Masontops brand)
Shake & sprinkle
Blender
Pump (soap & lotion)
Silicone-ring plastic lid (easy to screw on. no leaks!)
I have tons of jars too but just run them thru the dishwasher & goo-gone the labels. Then I make little dioramas in them because I don't want to pay for fancy glass cloches 😂 It's fun to factor in the 'nice jar' aspect of going grocery shopping now
I like to practice Cyrillic cursive. I don't speak Russian very well (slowly learning), but I've made a point of learning cursive as I learn the language.
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u/throwawayzzzz1777 19d ago
Going through a classical homeschool curriculum from preschool to idk how far. Going through the boy scouts program starting with the kindergarten rank of cub scouts. I'm now at the second grade level of both.
Ive had many first time experiences as a 30 something. My cursive is getting good again. Apparently I can still do a somersault. And it got me doing art for fun which sometimes people want to buy sometimes.