Sex. It can be really enjoyable, it’s a good workout, and you get to meet new people.
Making the absolute best possible pizza you can, it’s an obsession and sometimes it’s actively stressful which you’d think would be bad for mental health but it’s just the right level of stress and frustration and reward and relaxation and well, pizza, that it’s something that the more I get in to it the more even the most unnecessary extra effort to get only the slightest improvement of the texture or the taste will seem worth it. I also really love trying to emulate ones that I’ve had and loved so there’s kind of an end goal in so far as I can test if I think I’ve replicated or exceeded a standard I’ve set from my favourite pizza place. Doing it this way also opens you up to all the different existing styles you can try and then try to recreate. You could also invent your own if you’re creative enough. You can spend big on fun equipment but you don’t even have to because part of the fun is figuring out the smartest ways to achieve similarity of results with the resources at your disposal. I like making lots of notes to try something subtly different next time.
Whatever else is going on, I’m always in that zone when making pizza. The only problem with it is that it’s a bit impractical. The best pizza tends to be at least a 24 hour long affair with dough made in the morning ready for that night so when you’re super busy at work it’s not easy to fit a good pizza day in there with all the effort and mess involved but when you can, all feels right with the world.
I’m a huge advocate of gardening. It gets you outdoors and active, gives a sense of achievement, you learn and improve over time, it’s popular enough that you can get involved in a community, if you’re growing veg it promotes healthy eating.
It should be mandatory.
You… sound like my mother. She’s an incredible woman, but christ, no I’m not gonna go climb a tree right now and chop off the top branches, I’m in the middle of a Minetest marathon
House plants bro. It’s a game where the goal is not killing them.
I have a bamboo plant that seems to thrive on my neglect
Succulents are the answer! They thrive on neglect and look so cool and alien. I love them.
I know you didn’t really mean it literally but just to reiterate as others have done for other suggestions in this thread, this is very much an “if it works for you” sort of thing and definitely shouldn’t be mandatory. I fucking hate gardening with a passion, I want absolutely nothing to do with it, though it’s clearly very beneficial to others.
You dont seem to know this but its been shown that dirt actually has bacteria in it that have natural anti-depressant properties on humans. So you gardening and digging in the dirt is literally making u happier.
Playing an instrument, like a guitar. It’s great being able to play, but it takes time to learn it.
I’d say anything creative, something which pushes the mind to focus on generating new ideas instead of just running through the same old ones - this worked for me, at least, as rumination and catastrophising have been stapled to my noggin my entire life.
To be more specific, painting, building stuff with Legos, drawing, writing poetry, composing songs, whittling, woodworking, stuff like that.
Another important aspect (at least from personal experience, ymmv) is keeping the hobby a hobby - what I mean by this is not falling into the trap of perfectionism or productivity with it, keeping it light and fun. I now strongly believe that the brain needs something “inconsequential” on which to chew if only to remind it that not every stimulus it receives is do-or-die.
Keep a hobby a hobby, yes! Don’t try and monetize it! You will kill all the joy you once felt for that hobby.
It’s always great to accomplish things. Sports, arts, DIY, learning new skills, it doesn’t matter as long as you can feel proud of yourself afterwards.
Wax Sealing. You heat up colorful wax in a spoon over a tea light, pour it on a marble slab and then stamp cool designs into it. It is fun to experiment with different mixes, pouring techniques, etc and is very relaxing. Plus, when you are done, you have lots of cool seals. I have a bucket full of them and I like to just sit an go through them.
There is a youtube channel called ‘melts’ that makes really nice wax sealing videos with no talking.
Lets all try beekeeping, it will teach you to:
- look
- observe
- think
- take your time
- gets you out doors
- and gets food for the table
I would love to try, seems like a pretty hefty investment to get involved though.
You could do like I’ve done–raise native bees. I don’t know where you are, but in my area, mason bees and leafcutter bees are both native, solitary species. This means that they don’t create hives but rather nest in holes/tubes. There’s no queen. No honey. Very little work compared to keeping honeybees and better for the environment (assuming honeybees are not native to your area).
As a bonus, if you grow any plants, they make great pollinators. And when you first get the bees and they emerge from their cocoons, they are tiny and adorable and a joy to watch. They’re also very passive and almost never sting.
There’s not gonna be a proper answer that applies to everyone. For myself, riding BMX flatland, riding unicycles, carving wood, learning survival skills, keeping time…
… keeping time?
Check my username. I’ve been partly obsessed with keeping accurate track of time since I learned to read an analog clock at age 9.
By age 12, I started learning the exact times of the school bells. By age 15, I learned how to rebuild digital watches, and even replace the quartz crystal with a more accurate one.
By age 17 I was rebuilding mechanical self-winding wristwatches, and also learning to overclock computers.
Edit: For extra clarity, I also now know how to tune the firing order on an ICE engine, no matter how many cylinders. I also know how to time a VCR and tune a guitar.
I’m 42 years old now.
Interesting hobby. Iirc Einstein had his breakthrough trying to sync timepieces.
Sounds like you should pursue a career at NIST so your hobby can align with a profession. They’re all about keeping track of time to extreme precision with atomic and optical clocks.
I saved your comment to respond later once I got my words together.
I really appreciate your comment, seriously. But I never thought of it as a hobby, I thought of it as an obligation, to understand time, as best as possible anyways.
At age 9, I had just recently gotten my first glasses. I was left home alone for like a half hour, and I just stared at their analog clock. After 5 minutes, counting the ticks and watching the dials, I just understood it. Never even had to ask an adult.
I always thought of it as an obligation of education that I somehow missed before I got glasses.
I never once thought of it as a hobby before you described it that way.
⌚
355/113
Close enough right?
Also, a 1 meter pendulum swings at a rate of once per second. Handy info to know if all the clocks shut down, like in a survivalist situation or natural disaster.
Ah yes, because in an Apocalypse I’m gonna have a 1 meter pendulum handy.
Anything one meter long swinging on a pivot is a 1 meter pendulum no?
It probably only costs like $10 to get a measured line professionally tattooed on your leg/thigh for reference.
Strength training has such an incredible impact on your overall wellbeing everyone should incorporate it into their routine as much as possible
Chess. I think it’s saved my mental health over the last year.
How did you get into playing?
It was on holiday. There was a set at the place we were staying and the kids wanted to know how to play. I knew how the pieces moved, but not a lot else. I started to look up “chess strategies” and things, thinking I might find a few tips. Instead I found an addiction!
2 years later of daily studying and I’ve finally made it to “beginner” level.
Jigsaw puzzles. Start with a couple of hundreds of pieces and then go with the ones of thousands. Also gardening, but you need to have a garden or enough space to have plants inside your home.
Cocaine and good wine and sex and honesty
I’ve only tried cocaine once but I thought it was super over rated yet worryingly moreish, would only recommend if you’re rich.
Went from drunk to sober (wasted my beer) and woke up with my head feeling like a spike had been driven through it. 4/10
With some chocolate
@return2ozma Checking your smartphone less often
Going on a walk regularly.
… Where there is greenery. It’s scientifically proven to improve mental wellbeing if you see greenery just 20 minutes a day.
I was just coming in here to say walking in nature or hiking. 🙂
Although I do also get some benefit in driving through nature too.
a little bit of exercise is amazing for mental health. just half an hour, 2 or 3 times a week makes a massive difference
