You Can’t Do All the Hobbies

Let’s not bury the lead and pretend either way for a little bit. But no you can’t do everything all at once. I want to find more time to dedicate to some hobbies. Mainly, I want to start painting minis. I wrote about Lego last week, I want to start my build for that. Then there are comics which I do read, but I want to read them faster than I do. And I’m sure that I have other hobbies that I’d like to do.

So, if you are like me and want to try a lot of things, the answer is, you can’t do all the hobbies at once, at the same time. But there is some good news out there. Because I think you don’t need to, as much as you want to.

Taking Turns

And this idea of taking turns is why I don’t think that you need to do them all at once. And it is the reason that hobbies can be balanced out. I own painting supplies, I will paint sometime. But when is that time going to be. Probably when something else goes on the back burner.

What is that going to be, I’m not sure. When is that going to be, I’m not sure. But when I look at my painting stuff, I still want to paint. I see it right now and I want to take the day and paint instead of going into work. But it is okay to rotate hobbies. I might wrap up my D&D campaign and not start another for a year. That is a year in which I could paint. It all depends on what works best for me.

Combining

Another great thing is that a lot of hobbies can be combined. And while it might not always be something that you think about naturally, let’s talk about some of them. And let’s start with Lego who has made it easy to start combing with Dungeons and Dragons.

Lego made a Dungeons and Dragons castle and scene. It is officially licensed Dungeons and Dragons. So much so that Dungeons and Dragons made a scenario for the castle. That means that you can sit down and start playing a game around what has been built. I hope this means that Lego is going to come out with more Dungeons and Dragons set. Maybe you want to build with Lego and make your own scenes, why not do that as your Dungeons and Dragons settings?

Or for me, once I finish up playing Baldur’s Gate 3, so this one is a bit of both combing and taking turns, I want to catch up on some anime. Well, that might be the time to combine some hobbies for me. I want to pay attention while I watch anime, but there are a number where I don’t need to pay complete attention. So I want to wrap up Quintessential Quintuplets, throw it on and start painting. If a key moment is happening, I pause painting, but I can do two things at once.

So combine your hobbies.

Finally, Enjoy Your Hobbies

Let’s wrap this up nicely. I started out with some bad news, you can’t do anything. But it is okay. Not everyone needs to do all the hobbies at once. In fact, if you work, it isn’t possible to all the hobbies at once. And if you don’t, you probably can’t afford all the hobbies at once.

That again is negative. But on the positive side of things, doing the hobbies that you can is great. I get to enjoy playing Dungeons and Dragons. I get to enjoy watching anime, playing Baldur’s Gate 3, and more as hobbies. Not doing a secondary hobby to it doesn’t make it worse. It just means that eventually I’ll have more to explore.

I think at times it is possible to get into the mindset of we must own it all. We must play it all. But instead, I want to think and spend my time enjoying what I am doing. I know I need to remind myself of that sometimes, but all the hobbies are great. And some day, I plan to explore more.

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Different Ways to Start a New Hobby

Skimming

The first way is what I would call skimming over hobbies. That is where a new hobby interests you so you give it a whirl. You grab the minimal amounts needed to start the hobby and you get going. You see if you like it without much investment.

This is how I started divining into painting during the pandemic. I bought the minimal amount that I needed. A couple of brushes and a few paints. But I never got that into it. Some of it is that I bought less than I needed. I didn’t have primer so was just a bit of a mess as I tried to start.

Deep Dive

Another way, and this way I kind of am splitting into hairs with, is the deep diver. The person who will spend and get everything for a hobby with it. Let’s take painting miniatures again as an example. What happens if you do a deep dive there?

There are a ton of things you can get for painting. You buy things to hold miniatures, you get a ton of paints. There are things you get for storing paintings, magnifying glasses stands so see finer detail, and really so much that you can decide to pick-up. All of that before you even start the hobby. And with something like mini painting, they go deep into watching videos and learning techniques before even picking up a brush.

Preparing

And I think that it is splitting hairs some with deep dive and preparing. When you do the deep dive you get everything. When you prepare you get most of the things. But it is focused on making sure you have enough to start started well and enough knowledge to make it work.

In the case of painting minis, that is buying a good variety of paint colors, some different brushes, primers, varnish and more so that you are set for painting. I think even watching a video or two about being new to painting is good for preparing. It lets you know what you might not know, for me for example it was about varnish. But it isn’t so far down the rabbit hole that I’m looking up advanced techniques.

How Do You Start a New Hobby?

So what is your preferred way? For me, I think I wanted to just go and get started, which, I found, didn’t work for me. I am too much of a planner, that is part of what I do. Now I don’t plan everything, but I want to know a bit more of what I’m starting to do. And I did watch some videos but things like varnish, totally missed that when I started. And knowing a bit of why things are done, such as thinning paints is useful as well.

So now, when I start painting again, plan to do it this Fall, I am more of a preparer. I don’t think that I went into the deep dive stage, but I do think that preparer and deep dive are close. I own now more paints, varnish, and more brushes. But there are other things, like holders for all my paints, lighting, or whatever else it might be that I haven’t gone into. I will like watch a video on starting painting again, but that’ll be about it.

What is a new hobby you are starting?

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Why Do People Expect It?

I think before we talk about how you can keep up, we need to talk about why there is a pressure to keep up. And, honestly, if this pressure is even a good thing. I’ll answer the second question first. No, it is not a good thing. But let’s talk about why there is pressure.

People Want You To Like What They Like

This one generally is pretty harmless, though, it can be twisted. People often want you to know what is coming up and be involved in it because they are. They want to be able to talk about it with you, and, at it’s purest form, they want you to have the same joy that they are feeling.

It can be twisted into an expectation, though. Often people will use this as an expectation that you will like what they like. All of these things are very subjective. I might not like The Witcher not because it’s bad but because I don’t like fantasy. Now, we know that to be a lie, I do like fantasy, but as an example.

To Show You’re Cool

This one is never a good reason, liking something doesn’t make you cool. And expecting someone to like someone, or pressuring them to watch something and like something, also doesn’t make you cool. This comes from social media and the expectation that you can post about stuff and that will show a cool credibility. But there are plenty of people who will put on pressure and expectations that you need to keep up, or I need to keep up.

Why Should You Be Keeping Up?

There’s very few good reasons to be keeping up on everything. In fact, I don’t think there is a good reason to keep up on everything. Instead, I think that you can and should keep up on what you really love. But don’t give yourself the expectation that you need to.

Alex Radcliffe from BoardGameCo talked about this a bit with board games and board game reviews in particular. And it makes me think of a review that No Pun Included did on Tainted Grail. They powered through the whole game in a span or a week or two and did not like the game. And you can equate this to a Netflix show where everything drops at once. When you create an expectation for yourself that you need to watch something or play all of something immediately to be first, to be able to talk about it best, it loses it’s fun.

So you should be keeping up with stuff you love at a pace that is reasonable for it. For me, this can look like board games I don’t need to back on Kickstarter. For example, I talked about Mythwind today. This game is on Kickstarter currently and it looks really interesting. It is supposed to be like Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing where there is no win condition. I want to play it. But I do not need to back it right now, I can buy it later if I really want to.

How Do You Keep Up?

The answer, to me, is you don’t. Not because it’s bad to keep up, but because you literally can’t. For board games, thousands come out a year, anime episodes, thousands a year, movies, most years thousands a year, comics, thousands a year. I could go on to drive home this point, but the point is that even if you have a very focused hobby, there’s probably more than enough to keep you busy for more than a year.

So I think the question is less how do you keep up, but how to be at peace with not keeping up?

Keeping Up Doesn’t Make You Cool

The first piece is that you aren’t cool by keeping up. Sacrificing sleep to watch a show doesn’t make you cool. Spending lots of money on action figures doesn’t make you cool. And it’s a bit harsh for me to put it that way. But let’s turn it into a positive, you don’t need to feel the pressure of this. It can be a load off of your shoulders as you remember that being the first to something doesn’t make it your life more enjoyable. Instead go at a pace that brings you joy.

Not Keeping Up Means You Can Delve Into Stuff Deeper

For a lot of people keeping up means diving into something 100% for a week and then moving onto the next thing. Netflix seemingly drops a new show ever week, add in Amazon Prime, Disney+, Funimation, CrunchyRoll, Apple TV and more how many things can you keep up on. The speed you’d need to dive into the new favorite thing is going from weeks to a week to eventually days before you need to move onto the next cool thing.

I actually really like that the Marvel shows come out one at a time. Because I get to sit with and think about the show more. I can go into the breakdowns that New Rockstars, ScreenCrush, and Mr Sunday Movies are doing. I can chat about it every week with a coworker who loves Marvel as well. If Disney+ dropped them all at once it’d be a one and done experience.

Relieves The Pressure of Having to Love the Right Things

When you stop trying to keep up, you don’t need to love everything. Or at least seem like you love everything. You now no longer need to think about something that doesn’t interest you. When I stopped watching Game of Thrones it was nice. I always knew I wasn’t that interested in it but it was a group activity, and that group was fun to be around. When that group stopped meeting, I watched some more on my own because I felt like I should.

It was only when I stopped watching it did I realize how much I didn’t care about Game of Thrones. And I was happier for not watching it because it’s a depressing and frustrating show. Now you might love the first seven seasons of Game of Thrones (or even eight) and that’s great, but for me, it was nice not to feel like I should be watching it.

And you can do that with anything. Whether it’s the newest hottest board game, the video game that drops on next week, whatever it might be. And it leads into the last thing.

It’ll Be As Good One Month or One Year Later

If it is something that is great, you can find it later. So going back to Mythwind, if that is a game I want, I can find it later. It might cost a bit more on the secondary market, but that’s okay, it’s not taking up space now. And as much as physical space, it’s not taking up head space. If a game isn’t on my shelf, I won’t see it and think about playing it. Same goes for Netflix or a book. Don’t add a show to your queue, if it’s worth your time you’ll find it again. If a book is really good, they’ll show up at book stores for a long time.

Will you miss out on the initial hype, on that moment in time when to be cool you Tweeted about it? Sure. But will you have the bandwidth to get in on that anyways? The more you have to try and keep track of and keep up with at once the less you can dive into it and enjoy it.

So Don’t Even Try?

There are some things that are worth keeping up with. So it’s not that you don’t try, it’s that you find what is worth keeping up with for you. What do you care about knowing about? What do you want to dive into deeply and get immersed in? That’s up to you, not what is popular at the moment, not the newest hottest thing that is coming out. It’s not that you don’t try, it is that you get to choose what you really care about, which is way more fun. And if something is great, you can always come back to it later.

What is the thing that you dive the most into?

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So, how does this pertain to us now, or if you break a leg or are stuck in a location for a while for some reason or another?

For some people, it’s going to be great, they can pick up the million hobbies that have been sitting around waiting for them to have time to get to. But if you truly are stuck, or an extrovert, you need something beyond the normal to pick up because you’ll go stir crazy or you’ll pick up a bad habit. Again from John Rhys Davies, he commented how on some films, people hobbies would be, a drink in the evening, late morning, mimosa in the morning, day off, drink by the pool. And it’s easier to slip into those more destructive habits than it is to get into a new hobby.

We should be taking this opportunity to return to hobbies that we maybe can’t get to because of social obligations or to pick up a new hobby if your current hobbies are mainly social. For me, I thrive off of social interaction, and in person social interaction in particular. I have a solo gaming channel, and that helps me be able to play more board games and play them solo, but it still isn’t the same as playing with someone in person. I just like the option to talk too much. The channel gives some outlet for that, but not really enough. And currently, I just had two nights of gaming in a row, and three in a week have to be cancelled because of being responsible and social distancing. So I’m already, without having social distancing going on too long, hit the point where I’m wanting social interaction because my base level is gone already. This is something that maybe not a ton of nerds are going to have going on, but there’s also still going to be a number of us out there that will struggle. Kristen put it well, as she’s an introvert, social distancing for an extrovert is like her having to interact with 50 people face to face every day, not just a passing “Hi” but having to spend a moment in conversation and actually interact with them.

But that’s a little bit of a tangent, but kind of sets the base for why I’m talking about picking up new hobbies. While a hobby isn’t going to solve the lack of social interaction, it can certainly help abate it as you can focus in on something new or something challenging. There are a number of things to consider when picking up a new hobby that I’m going to give a run down of quickly.

How Do I Pick?
Yeah, there are a lot of hobbies out there, even removing the ones that can be done in a group, the recommendation is pick up something that’s adjacent to a hobby that you already have. For example, picking up solo gaming a while back for me was an extension of the board gaming hobby. Board gaming was kind of an extension of RPG’s. Now, I’m picking up painting minis because that’s an extension of both board gaming and RPG’s. If you love knitting, crocheting, or cross stitching, and haven’t done your own patterns, do them. If you love cooking, try and create recipes. If you love video games, start learning some coding.

How Much Do You Jump In?
There’s part of me that wants to jump into any hobby feet first, but I don’t think that’s responsible. Using the John Rhys Davies idea, it was a hobby for filming a movie. Or with social distancing or a broken leg, it’s a limited amount of time. So, when things get back to normal you might find that you don’t have enough time to really devote to that hobby still, so is it worth it to invest heavily into something that you won’t keep up long term? I’d argue that it doesn’t make a ton of sense. For painting minis, what I’m going to start doing, I bought a kit that has paints and a few other tools for it, and a cheap game with a bunch of minis, so that I can practice on something I care less about. Will that be all I get for it, who knows, but it was a fairly cheap start. I didn’t go out and buy five brushes and twenty paints and a massive minis game, plus other things like a light with a magnifying glass on it to see the finer details. That can come later if I find that I have time and that I do love it.

What If You Don’t Love It?
That’s what the first two things are for. But it’s very possible that you won’t love it. Or you won’t even like it, but that’s why you don’t invest too much into it. That’s why you pick something that if you don’t continue it, you won’t feel bad about not continuing it. Not every hobby is for everyone, I might find out that I don’t like painting minis, but now I know without investing too much money into it. And I’ll still have the game I got for it, so the only money I’d really be out is for paints. But if I love it, I have tons of games that I can paint. If not, I can probably find someone to pass on the paints to.

So, while you’re social distancing, or in the future, while you’re stuck at home, what hobbies could you pick up or pick back up? Is there something that you’ve been meaning to try that you haven’t gotten around to? Is this the time to try it? Let me know your ideas in the comments below.

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A couple of examples of this:
I have a lot of comic books, I read them when I got them and I enjoyed the stories that were told. But I haven’t gone back to reading them in a long time (I’m thinking I should soon), and I stopped getting new ones. That’s a collection now of comic books, but reading comic books was a hobby for a while.

Compare that to a friend of mine who had/has a massive collection of Star Wars and other action figures. He decided a little while ago that he wanted to start taking pictures of them and set-up scenes. He now has hundreds of posts, and over 1,000 followers on Instagram, at TheToysAwaken, who see the pictures and scenes that he’s set-up with what used to be his collection, and now is his hobby.

So why talk about this topic?

I think at times there can be judgement put on people because they aren’t using something has a hobby and it’s just a collection. It’s kind of the idea that if you have it and aren’t using it, you’re doing it wrong. Or the same is the other way around. action figures are a great example of this. We come to it with a collectors mindset because we think we’ll be able to sell them eventually. And you judge anyone who has opened up the package because now it isn’t in mint condition anymore.

Let me quickly get my main point out of the way. To complain that someone is collecting things or using things, that they paid their money for because they wanted them, is dumb. It is there money not your money, you get to decide how to spend your money, they get to decide how to spend their money, and that’s how it works. Stop judging people for not doing exactly what you’d do.

But I think the more interesting thing to look at is this shift, why does it happen?

There are plenty of obvious reasons, circumstances change in a person’s life, the thing gives you joy in a different way, you have a new interest, your interest in the thing is now focused in a different way.

Let’s take my board game “collection”. It’s not just a collection in the purest sense, where it’s something I have a lot of and I just look at. I use them, and in fact I’m not extremely picky about them, don’t have to have every card sleeved, because they are meant to be used and enjoyed until they fall apart. But this is a hobby that borders between being a hobby and a collection. I have a number of games that I haven’t played yet, and that is something that I’m hoping streaming (coming soon) will help me take care of. I don’t really like having games that I haven’t played and that are on my “shelf of shame/opportunity”.

But for a long time I had what I’d consider more of a hobby of games versus a collection of games. That was when I had a smaller amount of more simple games. I think I played games less often then than I do now, but all the games would get to the table, because I had a limited number. Now that the board game hobby is blowing up and there are so many options out there, it’s much easier to have games sit around and not be played longer.

I also think, though, that I do try and keep my board games as a hobby. There is the monthly game night, I have people over to play games, it used to be once a week, now it’s every other week and sometimes a random game time thrown in. But beyond that, I have the streaming that I’ll be doing so that I can play more games. And even more than that, I have culled games from my collection because I know I’m not going to bring them out again. So I’m trying to keep it to an amount where I can get to and play the games on a semi-regular basis (by that I mean every few years). And I’m lucky to be able to do that because we have a house, if we didn’t I’d have to cull even more games.

With all of that, my board games to border on a collection as well as a hobby, but it’s something that I’m trying to keep as both.

Compare that to my comics which are clearly a collection at this point. I have fond memories of reading them, and they are easy to store out of the way. But will I go back and read all of them again ever? Probably not, but I do plan on going back and reading some of them again, and probably soon, because I’m going through them again.

I’m also much more okay with my comic books being a collection, because they take up less space. But even with space, that isn’t always the factor. Sometimes you just need to divest yourself of something you know is just going to be a collection primarily.

An example of this is my Magic the Gathering cards. I’d love to be able to play more often, play more commander and casual games, but with the group who played, a lot of us now have small kids. Scheduling just isn’t reasonable anymore. So I have thousands of cards sitting around, what do I do with them? That’s a collection that at this point in time doesn’t have any inherit value to me. I’d really like to keep them if I was going to play more, but they are just going to take up space now, so it’s probably better to get rid of them, because I can’t read them, and just building random decks never to get used isn’t that much fun.

So how do you deal with a hobby that has become a collection? Have you had it work the other way ever? Are there any hobbies that are now collections that you need to get rid of?

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I’ve talked before about managing your time as a nerd, but I want to take a more in-depth look at a trick that helps me maximize my free time, set goals for the things I want to tackle next, and even get a better sense for which of my many hobbies I most value and want to devote more time to. While your mileage may vary with this tool, I’ve certainly found it useful enough to want to pitch it to other nerds who might find themselves having the same difficulty I do.

I call it…the Hobby Calendar!

Lackluster name aside, I’m of the opinion that it’s one of the better ideas I’ve had in a while. The concept is simple, but I’ve found it really helps me stay focused and keep from being paralyzed with indecision every time I have a moment’s free time. I find myself thinking, “I could do anything…anything at all! But what will I choose?” and then end up waffling endlessly over it and consequently wasting a sizable chunk of that precious free time, without making progress on anything whatsoever.

Last year, I decided I’d had enough, and that it was time to take charge. So I sat down, opened up a new spreadsheet, and made a list of my main hobbies in one column. In another, I listed the months of the year, and then proceeded to arrange the hobbies by month in a way that I felt made sense. Here’s what I ended up with:

As you can see, there aren’t many moving parts, and there’s nothing to regularly record (yet, anyway); it mainly serves as a reminder for what’s coming up next. Unsurprisingly, choosing what to put where was the hardest part. Some of the choices were arbitrary, but there was a method to my madness for others — for example, November is National Novel Writing Month, so naturally, that one had to be writing. And I know February is always the month that I end up feeling apathetic and really bogged down by winter, so I picked video games for that month since it’s low-key, doesn’t require much work, and allows me to hibernate.

You’ll also see that some months are doubled up — instead of breaking my hobbies down into twelve different activities, I chose to keep things more broad so that, while the calendar removes the “blank canvas” effect, I still have some freedom to decide what “crafting” or “writing” means to me on a given day. However, this is another spot where you can change things up to work for you. Maybe you work better when things are parsed out in more detail, or maybe you like the freedom that comes with broader categories — either method can be useful; it just depends your preference.

I’ve been using my calendar since June, so I won’t come full circle until May, but so far, this method has been really helpful — and even eye-opening — for me. One thing I’ve realized is that the thing I most often wish I were doing when I’m doing something else is crafting. This tells me that when push comes to shove, if I really had to narrow it down, making stuff would be my top priority. Knowing this, I can proceed with planning future months accordingly (whether that means setting aside more time for crafty activities, or keeping more variety on the list so that I’m more likely to branch out and learn new stuff).

As I more or less expected, some months have gone better than others — for example, reading month was easy, since I can pick up a book for just a few minutes and still make a little progress, which isn’t something I can do with, say, a story I’m working on or a show I want to watch. And sometimes months just end up being really full and I don’t end up with much free time at all (Artwork month just wrapped up, and, well…let’s just say there are a lot of ideas in my head that haven’t made it to paper yet).

But regardless of what I accomplish in a particular month, the sense of focus I get from the calendar means that I still get more done than I would have otherwise. And beyond getting rid of some decision fatigue, the calendar helps me put aside the guilt I’d normally have while working on something, wondering if my time would have been better spent in another way. Say in February I spend an afternoon playing Legend of Zelda, and the thought strikes me that maybe I should be getting more done on the craft languishing on my shelf instead. But when that thought comes, I can just remind myself that it’s video game month, and regardless of what else I could be doing, this is what I’ve chosen to do, and therefore, I have permission to not feel bad about it. In fact, I can enjoy it even more because of that!

So, what do you think, friends? Would you give the hobby calendar a try? What are some other tricks you’ve found helpful in your quest to do All The Things?

———————

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If you’re like me when it comes to nerding, you probably find that your eyes are often bigger than your stomach, so to speak. There are so many wonderful nerdy things to do, but a limited time for them. When you’re not engaging in nerdy pursuits, there are friends to visit, chores to do, errands to run…and of course, a job you need in order to purchase the necessary components for nerdy activities. And, you know, other important stuff, like food.

As my life seems to constantly be getting busier despite my efforts to make it the opposite, I’ve come to realize that things are probably never going to slow down, and if I want to do anything nerdy amidst all the hullabaloo, I’m going to have get creative about it. But luckily, we nerds are good at that. Here are some of the ways I’ve found to fit nerdy fun into an overbusy schedule:

Multitasking

This is a fairly obvious one, but an important one nonetheless. Sometimes, in order to find time for nerdy activities, you have to create time where none apparently exists (case in point: I’m writing this blog post after my calligraphy class, whilst watching Critical Role. Procrastinate? Me?! Never…).

A good strategy for this is thinking about how you can fill the downtime/waiting time you inevitably have in a given week with something you want to do. For example, you could get some reading done on the bus or subway, or listen to podcasts during your lunch break. You could watch your favorite vlog while you’re getting ready for work, play a little Gameboy or PSP while waiting in line, or knit a few more rows on your Doctor Who scarf while you’re riding shotgun on the way to a friend’s place. Little pockets of dead time pop up on a daily basis, and taking advantage of them is the perfect way to fit a little nerdery into your week.

Turning friend time into nerdy time

You should spend time with your friends no matter what — so why not ask them to join in the nerdy shenanigans with you, and take part in a nerdy thing you love with people you love hanging out with? Invite friends over for a game night, get together for a themed party, or go out to see that sci-fi flick you’ve been looking forward to watching. The possibilities are endless!

If your friends are already nerdy, this sort of thing will happen naturally on a regular basis, but it’s also a great way to introduce friends to nerdy pursuits they may not have discovered yet. And if your friends are (gasp!) not very nerdy, well…they are. They just don’t know it yet. And it’s up to you to show them!

Focusing on one nerdy activity for a while

This is a strategy I’ve just started putting into practice (and need to start doing more, to be quite honest). Personally, I’m into books, shows, movies, vlogs, writing, video games, anime, manga, comics, board games, role-playing games, drawing, and crafts. For a start. And I know I’m not the only one who has more nerdy interests than they know what to do with. And, of course, since I love it all, I want to do it all (simultaneously, sometimes). But before I even begin, I get overwhelmed by the sheer possibilities, and end up doing none of them as I squander my precious free time trying to figure out where to start.

This strategy is a pretty simple one — think about the interests you’d like to pursue, pick one of them (yes, just ONE; you can do it! I believe in you!) and focus on it for a week, or a few weeks, or even a couple of months. Once you’ve spent some time beating a video game, switch to catching up on your favorite show, and then to starting a new book series. This way, you eliminate the decision paralysis problem we know so well, and get to devote good, focused time to something you really enjoy doing. And even though you’ll feel like you’re doing less, the idea behind this strategy is that you’ll accomplish a lot more than you would otherwise, because you’re intentionally choosing to engage with something instead of taking things as they come while waiting for the day when you’ll finally have enough free time (a day which, in all probability, will never come anyway).

So there you have it! These are few of the ways that I find time to at least get closer to doing the amount of nerdy stuff I want to do. What are some ways you’ve found to fit more nerdery into your life? Share with us in the comments!

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