Years ago I started gardening. Small stuff like herbs that I could use on my food like basil and rosemary (pro tip, it’s difficult to kill rosemary and it looks nice). I adopted a dog and she keeps me away from the PC by needing some walks and sniffs. I get in a good 2-3 miles a day even as she ages.

I stopped reading books years ago and got sucked into the “inner world” of the internet and gaming. I’m now pulling myself back out of that and trying to do more in the “outer world”. Dungeon Crawler Carl is a great starting point to pull out of gaming so much. I’m also writing short stories, even if I don’t intend on ever publishing.

Cooking shows on YouTube are pretty great. I’m learning how to cook better and not relying on frozen pizzas or premade meals as much. Shout out to Chef John from foodwishes.com. Your short videos are a reason I’m eating healthier (arguably).

tl;dr Hobbies can be anything. You just have to put time and effort into it.

I have a few.

• Reading physical books.
• Making my own videos, though I post them on YT, so I suppose there’s some inherent enshittification by proxy.
• Exercise / Lifting Weights
• Journaling

learning to play an instrument and learn a new language still feels very organic

(side note about music: if playing an instrument and going online to learn, just ignore the enshittified headlines “the most overplayed song on instrument”…fuck them. if you like it and playing it makes you a better musician, ignore the gate keeper assholes trying to ruin a good thing even at the learning stage. good music is popular for a reason)

as is drawing/painting with real paint on paper - again, if you are learning online ignore the gatekeeper enshittified titles.

also writing stories: ive air gapped myself from using any online resources for it. took more effort than it really should tho just to stay away from AI laden doc softwares.

also audio/ reading. but researching is getting heavier to make sure im reading a human written story… i swear we are going in the direction where we start printing it out and meeting to exchange stories again just to escape the slop.

Gardening, writing, game making, hiking, trail running. I don’t care that nobody will read my writing or play my games, it’s good for my brain to engage with when I’m feeling creative.

Cooking. A squash is a squash.

Tabletop RPGs outside Hasbro (D&D)

I am in the process of restoring an old truck, which I’m using a total of two commercial shop manuals and the Field Service Manual from the Manufacturer to restore.

The closest I’ve seen one of those get enshittfied was when my cat peed on one. It got a replacemnt.

I’m really into coffee these days and that’s sort of immune, or at least quite resistant, as long as you’re smart about what you buy.

My espresso maker is fully manual (and incredibly well built and durable), and my grinder is bare bones, just high quality materials. No screen, no smart features, just a power button. You twist a dial to adjust grind setting. Everything is well constructed, it’s got really nice burrs that are easily replaceable, the whole thing is made of metal, and you can easily take the whole thing apart if you need to repair or replace anything. The only thing smart in my setup is my kettle, but I don’t have it connected to the internet. I didn’t even want the smart connectivity features but it is a super high quality kettle with lots of great offline features (ability to set temp to nearest 0.5°C, set altitude for more accurate boil temperature, etc) plus it’s really well made (all metal, laminar flow gooseneck pouring spout, etc) so I got it anyway. No regrets. The only thing I have to buy now is coffee itself, and I always support small local speciality coffee roasters, of which there’s many. So if a roaster does try to skimp out or something I have tons of options to switch to.

IDK, but I just play old games and its a vibe. Why play new games when old games are just as good, if not better?

I do a particular style of partner dancing. The less competitively focused styles really don’t have much room for that particular trend. At the end of the day it’s deeply human to human.

there is more books, media, and video games before the current times than I could read in many lifetimes. I would say nature walks but that will get worse and worse going forward but it will take awhile to not be something im doing. I can deep breathe any time I want or talk with folks around me and even now online is managing to get by with things like open source and the federation. suduko, other games. tabletop role playing games.

Woodworking, Crochet, Basket making, Volunteering

I play, and already have, like a whole bunch of musical instruments. I’m not Eric Clapton on any of them, but I can play well enough and I can sing ok, and I’m pretty genre-fluid. There are lots of people just like me. As long as humans have campfires someone is going to bring a guitar to it.