I’m a bit of a jack of all trades. When I work on a project I use anything from woodworking and sewing to chemistry and physics to human physiology and psychology. I also like reading up then chatting about random science and history and art stuff. I like working with computers occasionally, and I’ll just randomly throw some basic geometry or algebra into a project, but I was also an art student so I’m not half bad at making things visually appealing either.
I have a job where I often get a chance to use my various areas of semi-expertise when I pick up a side project, but that’s led me into getting waaay overinvolved in my work and neglecting my outside relationships. What hobbies or other non-professional things could I get involved in that would give me that same opportunity to flex my creativity when solving a problem?
It might sound odd, but genuinely, check if any local wildlife rehabs/centers need volunteers.
There’s constantly something that needs done, often in creative ways, especially when doing something like designing an enrichment area. It might just look like a bunch of random junk, but a lot of thought and effort goes into constructing something that actually mimics situations an animal might encounter in the wild.
Because you talk about hobby, what about LARP ?
It’s creative, is about problem solving, and involves a lot of skills including
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Sewing and crafting, the community has a huge DIY culture (even though nowadays, there is a few brands doing larp fashion, and it’s cheaper to buy and chainmail, than to buy it’s weight in steel wire). So getting all these awesome kits is the opportunity to craft a lot
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Acting : As it’s name stand larp is about role-playing, which is basically improvisation theatre with a scenario known only by the director. So you try to put up your best acting to be a realistic, mafia boss, naive kid, or lord
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Problem solving and social interactions : Larp are a social game, where people face a common problem and need to find a solution, while finding the right balance between their character faction/interest and the common interest. So there is a lot of social negotiation (often around some spiced wine), mystery investigation, and exploration to solve the main problem
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Combat, in some larp, if you play a fighter character, you may even have the opportunity to fight. On my experience, I end-up fighting in less than half of the game, there is game with no combats, games where my character either can fight or is too busy with other stuff to fight, and some games where I go fighting.
Came here for this. You can basically use LARP as an excuse to further almost any creative hobby. For PAX Unplugged I made a LARP Escape Room, and that was an excuse for me to learn how to use Arduino controllers and wire hardware in order to make a robot puzzle for the event.
Any kind of RP is good for that. Personally I find LARP/Cosplay kinda cringe, but TTRPGs also encourage creativity in problem solving.
American ?
I really have the impression that on this side of the pond larp gets well accepted. And it offers way more way to be creative/craft than TTPRG. But i understand that if you’re used to see people in Short-Tshirt fighting each other with pool noodle in a public park and calling it “LARP” you have a biased view of the scene
Canadian. And yeah either that or the LARP scene from Peep Show.
Just check the “drachenfest” (Larger larp in the word, in Germany) trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1IQO3xer-Q it’s still a “mass larp” so not the most intense/immersive/strange,and tell me if it’s still feel “cringe”
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Yeah it does to me. Not trying to yuck anyone’s yum, I think it’s great that those people are having fun. But for me, cosplaying in general is just really lame. I never understood the appeal of dressing up. For roleplaying, I feel that it would hinder my suspension of disbelief to be looking at someone’s conception of what fantasy costumes look like for them.
Also, roleplaying is an intimate activity in my mind. Not necessarily sexually intimate, but there is a trust component. I wouldn’t want to attend a larping convention for the same reason I wouldn’t want to play Pathfinder with a different group of people every week. In order to really be comfortable getting into someone else’s head, you need to be a bit vulnerable. And to do that, you need to build up some trust with others. Trying to roleplay a character at a convention full of people I don’t know sounds like my version of Hell.
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Museums need a lot of interesting one-off exhibits and interactive stuff. There used to be a few small, local museums for local nature and history in my area that used volunteers to create really cool and informative stuff. Libraries might do some of that too or know about fairs and stuff where preservation groups and the like tend to show off stuff they’re preserving or whatever.
If there’s a community radio or public broadcast group they’ll need quality volunteers. A HAM license opens up a lot of volunteer opportunities especially preparing for and in emergency situations.
This is a little more what I was looking for, yeah. I’m wondering if I can email around and find some take-home projects to work on while the sun’s down (being my normal waking hours).
My father put together a couple of collections of stuff from my grandfathers’ WWII service for the library and they put it on display for a while. If you have an idea yourself they’d probably love to let you run with it if you speak with them about it- that’d probably be the surest way to get started.
EDIT: also if you’re lucky enough to have a makerspace in your area that’s the candy store- they’ll know about lots of projects that need various expertise and talents.
I volunteer at a …I don’t even know how to call it. Mostly it’s a night club that isn’t profit-oriented, with very low prices due to the fact that it’s entirely run by unpaid volunteers. It’s also a cultural center, hosting poetry slams, second hand item sharing events, art exhibitions. And a place to hang out at the camp fire.
During my work there I learnt a lot about event organization, sound and light tech, IT systems administration, woodworking, electrical work, painting, bookkeeping, bartending, house maintenance, cooking, gardening, public speaking, networking … The list just doesn’t end.Remodeling contractor/designer. Discussing ideas and plans with homeowners is a psychological trip and you’ll have to use math to show them visually why they’re wrong. You also mentioned non professional, but this could also be a hobby where you only take on a few projects a year and get more personal with your clients.
maybe. idk if I’m polished enough in those areas to provide the results people would exist, but maybe some light handyman stuff? It would certainly make me a lot more friends.
Lmk when you get started. I need some help cheaply remodeling a bathroom.
Community makerspaces are great. You get into quite a few areas all over the place.
Falconry can involve tons of different skills. Mews (aviary) and giant hood (travel box) can use carpentry. Hoods/other gear -> leather working. Bells -> metallurgy. Perches -> metalwork and woodturning. Drone / kite flying maybe depending on bird. One guy makes his own telemetry. Lots of designing for the many little things needed. Almost everything needed is handcrafted or repurposed from something. I use 3d printing for my giant hoods, whistles, and anklet templates. Also like, animal training and hunting stuff for the raptor.
But falconry is not a casual activity, it’s truly a lifestyle. Because of that, there are a lot of falconer couples, or, divorced falconers. So uh, make sure your partner is really into it before going in deep.
Do you think about things in terms of hobbies really?
I 100% identity with what you’re say about your interests, mindset, and experience, but I think about my interests in terms of a desire to learn the most fundamental skills I can manage. I’m not very good at programming complex tasks, but I can build breadboard computers. I know all the basics of circuits and can reversed engineer most hardware. I know FreeCAD, 3d printing, wood working, manual lathe and mill machining, sand casting basics, torch stick mig and tig welding, heavy equipment like excavators front end loaders skid steer/loader, commercial driving, auto body and paint, hotrodding, building motors with carburetors and superchargers, I was a buyer for a chain of bike shops and have a bunch of skills related to that along with commuting by bike full time, racing crits, I’ve been all over Linux for the last 10 years, and most recently I’ve taken a deep dive into generative AI and LLM’s over the past year.
The majority of those listed are things I’ve done professionally for some amount of time although some much shorter than others. I think of all of them as applying across the others in abstract ways. Like I owned an auto body business twice. I know what is involved with perfect finishing. It is a fundamental struggle against yourself and your inner expectations of time applied to a task. I did most of that in my early to late twenties, and it greatly shaped my attention to detail and ability to suppress my impatience. The way it shaped my mind and the skill are the things I value. I know KiCAD and can etch my own circuit boards, but over all electronics was the first real subject I could not fully understand quickly and intuitively and shaped how I compartmentalize my learning. FreeCAD helped my spacial awareness. AI has massively improved my communication and self awareness. Welding and heavy equipment helped me conquer many of my fears such as heights. Machining helped me balance my understanding of accuracy as it relates to humans. Spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for bike shops taught me a lot about the average human’s thought process in an empirical analysis based on statistics.
I’m a fundamentally abstract thinker, call myself a jack of all trades (master of none), and mostly a skills collector.
I’m always leaving stuff out on these lists too, like I’m writing a science fiction universe right now, or how I’ve got a small telescope and built my own eyepieces, or how I am into cooking and fermentation, or recently started growing some foods in pots, etc. I got hit by a car ridding a bike to work 10 years ago, so a lot of this is like 2 different people’s lives; before and after disability. The second is in near social isolation and therefore has had unlimited time to explore and had to explore in order to maintain mental stability.
