When someone asked me recently what I’m into I didn’t have answers. Existential crisis aside, what are some good hobbies/interests for someone in their mid thirties to pick up?
Probably some of these mentioned already:
- Cooking more instead of buying pre-made
- Learning some basic home maintenance like plumbing, keeping appliances cleaned, simple electrical stuff, etc
- Growing some small veggies
- Prepping for disaster - different time frames and scenarios like: fire, no power, poor air quality, floods, data loss, having to leave in a hurry
- Simple exercise and stretching routine
Really anything can be a hobby, but I’ll be a shill for my own hobbies real fast: playing guitar, hiking, writing, reptiles/snakes, tea, and tabletop games.
Motorcycling. You’re old enough to not do the stupid shit that gets young riders killed.
Take the MSF’s beginner course (or your country’s equivalent), spend more on your helmet, jacket and gloves than you do your first bike, and have fun. Spend as much on your helmet as you think your brain is worth.
Remember, you’ll drop your bike, so start with a cheap used one. After a year (or less) with it you’ll have a better idea of what kind of riding you like, and that will inform your choice of second bike.
You’ll drop that one too, by the way. Don’t sweat it. Maybe buy spare brake and clutch levers.
Find a local moto community. Maybe get an intro to the Denizens of Doom. Heck, even a Facebook group can do the trick. You’ll meet new people and make new friends, while learning from people who’ve been riding for decades.
If you survive your first year (you will), you’ll also have become a far better car driver. Riding without a safety cage around you does wonders for situational awareness and risk awareness.
Last note: the car drivers are trying to kill you. They may not realize this, but you should. You’re invisible to them. Ride with a healthy dose of paranoia. But smile. You’re having fun.
I’m absolutely interested in getting a motorcycle and have been for a while. I want one pretty much only to cruise around town or other small trips. My wife has absolutely shut that down lol.
Well, that sucks. But I’m not going to tell you to pick a hobby over the woman you love. There are plenty of other things you can do that won’t scare the pants off her. :)
I have kids so her worries aren’t illogical. Whatcha gonna do
Different people have different risk tolerances. I have two kids. My spouse cares that I wear proper protective gear (and so do I!) but otherwise doesn’t try to restrict me. That said I have rather less time with kids than I did before we had 'em. :)
Go rock climbing! It’s a great workout and the people around are the most chill people ever!
I second this, it even got a little addictive for me at one point.
Every year I try to pick up a skill or a hobby, so I’m just gonna list a few I’ve kept over the years and you pick two:
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keyboard and playing shitty moody electronic music. Just learning any instrument is frustrating and fun.
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photography and videography including drone photography and videography. Learning video editing and making silly videos.
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amateur radio.
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fishing, walking around the woods, foraging and identifying mushrooms and not dying painfully and horribly after cooking and eating some every once in a while. See the discussion below before you eat any mushroom you find, it’s actually serious and you can legitimately die or hurt yourself and it will be very painful.
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some kind of fitness thing, weightlifting, hiking, cycling, indoor rock climbing.
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keeping aquariums, some fun plants, a few cute shrimp and messing it all up and getting disgusting worms and nuking the whole thing.
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knitting.
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riding a motorcycle and learning how to do maintenance and repairs on a motorcycle.
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cooking, baking, pickling, dehydrating, curing.
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fpv drones, flying them, crashing them, fixing them and building them. Soldering in general is pretty fun and sometimes handy.
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vidya games, playing them, modding them, making them poorly.
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reading.
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water color painting and charcoal drawing.
Can answer questions if any of these sound interesting.
Great list. I do have to pop in and say though, amateur mushroom foraging is a ludicrously deadly hobby. I’d advise against that for most people. A mushroom that’s tasty and a mushroom that kills you dead in minutes sometimes look extremely very much the same.
Now granted most people aren’t likely to stumble across a ring of Death Caps in their local innawoods, but still, fungi are to be respected and generally not fucked with. Some of those Gi’s are not as Fun as they’d like you to think, and trained and true mycologists have been killed by misidentification.
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I learned a bit of woodworking recently. You can go totally stupid on it like I did and drop a thousand dollars on tools you’ll only sometimes use, or you can grab a hammer and a saw and start making stuff the long way around. It’s kind of a trade-off of convenience versus expense in that way, but I enjoy making stuff.
Came in handy this spring when my front stairs collapsed. I probably saved ten grand at least for being able to DIY that.
I second woodworking. You can absolutely spend a shitton of money on tools, but you really don’t have to. Start with a cordless drill and a circular saw. Then a plunge router. Then a table saw. If you’re looking to build furniture, get a planer, then a jointer eventually. Bandsaws are nice, but a jigsaw is a better beginner purchase for curves.
Get stuff used off FB marketplace, craigslist, OfferUp, or auctions. Estate sales are fantastic for used tools, I got a shaper with about $2k worth of tooling for $40. Most of my tools are from marketplace or auctions. New, they’d easily be over 10 grand, but I’ve spent maybe $2.5k total over five years of slowly accumulating stuff.
Resist the pressure to build stuff to sell. Everyone around you will push you to monetize your hobby, but you don’t have to. It’s ok to spend money to help you do something you enjoy. (If you want to sell things, great, but don’t do it just because people say you should. It really sucks the fun out of it)
I agree with many here about finding some sort of exercise, it’s especially beneficial as we age. Cooking is another great one that was mentioned, and it goes hand in hand with staying healthy along with exercising.
One I didn’t see mentioned was Lego. Fair warning, it can get very expensive, but I found it very relaxing to build something with my hands. Plus, you can just turn off your brain for a bit and it feels great to admire a build after you’ve completed it.
I started building sets for things I was interested in, like Star Wars, and would watch the movies while building or put on an audiobook.
