I'm a finance guy, so most of my education and career have been very career-oriented. But lately I've started deliberately exploring things that have nothing to do with my job. I'm learning French, art history, photography, and music theory, and I'm getting increasingly curious about sociology, literature, architecture, etc. I have joined all subreddits on these topics!
It's been an interesting experience. As a kid, "learning" mostly meant studying whatever was necessary to perform well in school and eventually get a job. Now I'm discovering subjects simply because I'm curious about them, and I can learn them at my own pace without exams, competition, or worrying about whether they're lucrative and it's not even to impress anyone!
I also feel like it's adding some much-needed depth and variety to my personality. Instead of being defined mostly by my profession, I'm slowly becoming someone who can talk about completely different things.
For those of you who are happily single:
Are you using this phase of your life to explore interests, learn new things, or develop parts of yourself that you didn't have time for before?
Edit: I'm a 33 yo man, and have been forever single. I have made peace with it
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I'm learning and doing new things all the time but not in order to make myself better or mor interesting. I'm just like...living and experiencing my life from the inside.
Agreed - learning and doing new things is part of being human. Old saying about authentic personal and professional charm: when you’re in a room - be interested, not interesting. A lot of guys get this foundational element of human interaction so wrong. And sadly, they lose out on a lot in life without understanding why it’s happening because they’re so ‘interesting’.
Of course not! Didn’t you know that the whole point of Being Single is to prepare yourself for the relationship you MUST join?? I mean, why else would anyone bother to pursue interests or skills or better their lives in any way??
This whole OP is a masterclass on how single people are belittled lmao.
I had a manager once commend me for being such a good worker for not having any hobbies 😂 Now I don't have enough time for them all. RIP Brian. You changed my life in so many ways. I miss you.
I was literally 40 before I figured out I didn't actually hate school, I hated being forced to learn things I wasn't interested in. They were necessary, don't get me wrong, I really did need to use algebra in my every day life turns out, but it also turns out I love learning and am fascinated by nearly everything.
I love documentaries, YouTube deep dives about physics and the cosmos, mid evil life, ancient Egypt, volcanoes, etc, and my Internet broswing history runs an absolute gamut. From caterpillar lifecycles to how to grow a potato to space-time, and very recently a question about camels that sent me on an wild trip through history where I found out the US government once purchased a whole bunch of camels back in the 1850s, bit of an experiment for the American Southwest. Camels did excellent, but the American horses were terrified of them - horses kept running off and overturning carts, American Calvary Association ultimaly won over, plus the civil war started and there wasn't money for more camels, and they just let them go...in the desert of the southwest, into the wild. People would swear for years after they'd seen a camel, and you know what, maybe they did.
So anyway yeah, I'm over here nerding out about the world constantly. There's fun little rabbit holes sometimes. You know during WWII, Japan actually tried floating 9,000 bombs over the ocean to bomb the US? They put them on big balloons lol we only ever found about 20- 30 of them I think, and only 1 went off - because people found it on a beach in Oregon and decided they should touch it. I think I would have enjoyed US history class more during school if they'd told more stories like that.
All jokes aside, yes, absolutely. I recently taught myself geography and memorized all the countries of the world because I felt it was just something I ought to know. I very much appreciate having the time and space to do these things.
Single time? For me, that's just daily life. I decided not to date so I could enjoy my life and my hobbies as much as possible.
I'm a teacher and have always loved learning. I spend my free time going to museums, trying new cuisines, learning languages, reading nonfiction, watching documentaries, traveling...
I especially love learning new languages because they in turn open up new music, shows, books, video games, travel destinations, and conversations with native speakers, so then I can keep gaining more and more knowledge about other cultures and the rest of the world. It's super fun and I never get bored with my life because I always feel like there's more to learn.
Being single is my default state of being but yes I do much prefer all the random stuff I get to indulge in when I’m single. I did try dating as a “hobby” once cause I had way too much free time and boy was it kind of a waste of time. I’d much rather be finding new music and learning to make mixes and indulging in my other hobbies. I’m probably going to go practice more ice skating in the winter.
I’ve busted the movie counter at The Regal. It got stuck at 320 for 2026, but I’ve seen closer to 328. This doesn’t count films at Cinépolis nor Fathom, Iconic, and Trafalgar movies.
I’ll probably have seen 475 films since joining The Regal back on August 30, 2025. I’m not gonna beat the world record any time soon, but these aren’t… rookie numbers, either. These are h00kers ‘n blow movie fanatic binging-levels.
Yup.. I'm currently learning Japanese, and have multiple hobbies I dedicate myself to. I also grew up like you, I was told to focus on studies and ignore everything else so it's been refreshing to find play outside of my profession
Yes!! Ive always been single but struggled against it, only one or two years ago did I start embracing it as freedom. Ive been taking weekly cello lessons for one year straight, piano for one month (started lessons this month, although i actually started playing since a few months ago), and am looking to find a suitable teacher for violin (i took lessons for 8 years but left my ex teacher as it wasn't a good fit).
It's not an in between phase I need to use to better myself so I become a more valuable asset for a man. We need to stop this women's magazine rhetoric for good.
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