Episode 31: Keeping Your Hobbies

I recently finished up running Dungeons & Dragons for the first time for my kids, which in and of itself was something of a Herculean – technically, I guess we've played before.
I ran a short game for them once when they were much, much younger during COVID times.
They remember it a little bit, but they were very young, and keeping attention spans was difficult.
So this was the first attempt in earnest to really run a session.
They're old enough now where they can keep their attention together.
They understand some context around what's going on.
They've watched movies and read books and things that give them some context here.
Things like Lord of the Rings content – they have some context here.
More life context than they did five years ago or four years ago.
So something of a Herculean task to coordinate this.
In many ways, the only way this really worked out was because they were on a spring break from school.
And not only did they have no school, they also had no activities because most of their activities are tied to school.
And so they didn't have any of those.
And then my wife also took off a couple of days so that she could also be part of this.
And I was off as – I'm not working at the moment either.
So we all had time during weekdays to sit down and spend some time on this, right?
Because normally it's very difficult, you know, between kids' activities and, you know, I mean, there's things like sports and music and school.
And then, of course, adults are working.
And sometimes you just want to sit down and stare blankly at the wall and disengage from the universe.
I mean, there's so many things going on in day-to-day life with, you know, relatively young children and two working adults that everyone having time to sit down and do much of anything together is difficult.
Let alone an activity like D&D, which if you've never played this sort of thing, I mean, a minimum time frame to really kind of get in and get immersed in what's going on.
It's at least a three-hour experience.
And that's assuming that you already have characters together and the DM at least is relatively familiar with the rules and can move things along.
And, you know, you're talking a minimum of three hours.
This is not like sitting down to a quick game of cards or a, you know, 15-minute board game or something.
So took some doing.
Had a lot of fun doing it.
I was running the game in this case.
Had a lot of fun doing it.
You know, sort of some things you'd expect.
Some things you wouldn't expect.
I mean, it was a good time.
It's always fun, right?
I used to play a lot of D&D, I guess, toward the end of, like, through high school years, I guess.
We played quite a bit.
I had a group of friends who were pretty into it.
So we played a lot of that.
Then, you know, on and off here and there throughout college and, like, mid-20s.
And I probably would say I didn't play it for 10 years or more at a certain point.
And then during COVID, some of the friends I used to play with fired up a game virtually over, you know, like, Discord.
And I forget what the platform was we were playing on.
But whatever it was, there was some ways to have maps and dice rolling, all kinds of stuff.
And then this.
But it's all gotten me thinking about hobbies and what it means to hold a hobby, particularly as, you know, life gets complicated and you have jobs.
And, I mean, again, I think back to when I was, you know, mid-teenage years and the weekend could roll around and, you know, you get done with school on Friday or whatever.
And you could come home and pretty much just engage in whatever hobby you want all the way from Friday through Sunday.
And then you kind of suffer through a few days of school and do it again.
I mean, there wasn't a lot of other things going on.
It was very easy, particularly once a couple of friends were able to drive places.
Very easy to engage in hobbies, particularly if your whole group of friends is sort of on the same page.
And I've realized over the years that a lot of those hobbies, I don't want to say faded, but they become very difficult to, you're not set up in the same way to really engage with them at that same kind of level.
You know, things get complex and you have other things on your mind.
And I remember because I was playing, again, some D&D stuff with a group of new people, probably in my, I don't know, mid-twenties or something.
I had started working.
And so that kept going for quite a while.
I'd say maybe a year and a half, two years, maybe even a little more.
But eventually, you kind of watch people drop off one at a time, and maybe it's even yourself included because things get busy and it's kind of that easy thing to drop off, right?
Because even, you know, even if you love doing something, let's say your time slot to play is a Thursday night or a Wednesday night or something.
You go through a whole day of work, you're tired, and then it's like, oh, I got to drive out to this location to play this thing.
And it's very easy to just be like, nah, not that day.
And then you look around and you think, where did all of my hobbies go, I suppose?
Or maybe you're looking around and you're realizing that maybe you're around other parents or something if you know people like that.
And you realize that really none of them have any hobbies.
And it's very easy to see how, right?
It's very easy to see how you, you know, again, things get busy and things get complex and you got things in your mind and you're working and you're running activities and whatever.
And it's easy for those things to fall off.
Like, I equate this also, I think about other, like, video games and stuff I used to play.
I used to play some of these, you know, some MMOs.
I used to play League of Legends, things like that.
But they're very time-consuming.
Even sitting down to a couple of games of League of Legends might be a two, two-and-a-half-hour endeavor.
MMOs, forget about it.
They're so grindy.
If you only play an MMO for an hour, nothing happens.
You don't go anywhere.
I also think that this connects to, at least for me, losing touch sometimes with friends.
Because a lot of times, at least for me, you know, maybe you rallied around a particular hobby with your friends.
And it's not that that was the only thing connecting you all, but it might have been a strong piece of it, right?
It might have been that thing that always got people together to do whatever that thing was.
And this also could be a guy thing.
Like, I've heard kind of this thing where, like, guys need a – you need an activity to kind of bring everyone together.
Like, we don't just get together to get together and catch up.
Like, that's not a normal thing, I guess, that many guy friend groups do.
You kind of need, like, an activity.
It's like that kind of hackneyed thing of the guys hang out in the garage and, like, work on a car.
But it's just – working on the car is just an excuse for people to kind of be together.
But, like, guys need that excuse.
I don't know.
I've heard this.
It's probably super sexist and whatever.
But it seems to have held up through at least my life.
I think there's kind of two things that I find worth thinking about in this sort of line of thought.
Maybe three.
One has to do with – I think it's worth trying to hold on to some hobbies, particularly ones that connect you with other people.
Because in today's world, where more and more connection has become strictly kind of online messaging-based kind of stuff, having some hobbies where you and some friends are able to rally around and, you know, again, have that excuse to hang out, I think is a really great thing.
And I think trying to find ones that maybe are not as digital, less digital, require some physical presence.
I'm not saying, you know, don't do the digital ones too.
Like, if that works for you, great.
But I know I find that it's nice to have some stuff that's less digital where you can kind of put that phone aside and not worry about it for a while.
So, the other thing that makes me think about is the idea of sort of passing your hobbies like so many other things on to children.
You pass a lot of traits on to your kids, whether they like it or not, whether you like it or not.
They're around you all the time.
You're present.
You're practically – you're almost ever present.
And so, things will impress upon them.
And sharing some of these things that – but it's a balance, right?
Sharing some of these things with them that were always important to you I think is a really great thing.
But there's a line between that and pushing it on them and like making them feel forced to do them.
But I think there's just something to be said there for remembering that it's not just about genetics and intelligence and work ethic and whatever.
There's all – and sports.
I mean, at least, you know, sports is, of course, a huge thing that a lot of times parents are pushing their kids to do.
There's also this hobby aspect.
And I think introducing them to some of these hobbies along the way is really a great way to keep them alive, keep those hobbies alive, not just for you, but for a whole new generation of people.
All of this brings me to the question of how does one find and set aside the time to do these hobbies?
And how deep can you afford to dive in?
And I think those questions are related.
So if you assume a way for a moment that you can find some people to do a particular hobby with, which has its own challenges.
But then from there, I mean, I know that I don't have the lifestyle anymore where, gosh, I could find – I used to be able to find a game and I could dive into that for practically a week straight with barely eating, sleeping, or otherwise.
And that was fine.
It didn't even interrupt my life, right?
It was just like, oh, I could just do this and then move on to whatever else.
That's not how it works anymore, right?
So I don't know.
In my world, I have gravitated recently towards more hobbies that, A, look less like work, right?
And I think that's a key piece is that probably your hobbies should not resemble your work.
They can benefit from your work, but they probably shouldn't just be more work.
And, B, I gravitate towards hobbies that are a little easier to dip in and out of than they used to be.
It used to be I was very comfortable getting into hobbies that were very all immersive.
Like you really had to dive in and commit to it to get anywhere with it.
And I do find that as I've gotten older and, again, life has become more going on and all that kind of stuff, hobbies that maybe you can dip in and out of a little easier are useful.
And then, secondly, or thirdly, I suppose, if you have kids trying to find some things that you both can do together, because it gives you a reason to, or I feel like it gives me a reason to both engage with the hobby and engage with the child, right?
Like, it's a way to kind of two birds with one stone kind of thing.
So, yeah, hobbies.
I have always found them to be super important.
I think more and more as I look at things, it's almost hard to break into or out of this mindset, depending on how you're looking at it.
But at least for me, it's really easy these days for me to start spending time on some hobby that I used to love.
And in the back of my head, always be thinking, oh, is this time I should be working on something, whether working on the house or working on a job or working, you know, whatever.
And it's almost like I've trained myself where if I'm not working, I'm not doing something of relevance, right?
And I don't think that's true.
Like, when I sit and think about it and more cognitively, you know, zero in on that thought, it's irrational.
Because that hobby time, if it's something you truly enjoy, it opens you up to a whole number of things, right?
It lets you decompress.
It gives you a reason to step away from your work so that you can come into that more refreshed some other time.
It's that piece of life that should be just yours and something that you really enjoy.
And one of those things that makes life worth really living that doesn't have to be tied to constant productivity and constant, you know, grinding through things.
So anyway, what do you think?
Have you been able to keep up with hobbies of your own?
How have you gone about it?
I've struggled with this over the years, but I've kept up with a good number of them.
And I'd say that my biggest challenge actually is staying with one hobby and not just senselessly floating between them.
But in some ways, I enjoy that too.
So, you know, I'd always love to hear from anybody how they manage to keep up with these things.
For me, it really does come down to the, you know, finding things that are a little more bite-sized,
finding things that do fit within certain family constraints and also finding things that are not like my work.
And I find if I fill those three criteria, not like my work, fits within my family constraints,
and it's a little more bite-sized and easier to dip in and out of,
that that's a good recipe for success for me for either developing a new hobby or engaging in ones that I already enjoy.