ISO a hobby!! Pitch my your favorite hobby and really sell me on it 🤩

Question

niti · Answer

learning to identify mushrooms and other edibles: i love going on a long walk in my neighborhood and taking the opportunity to look at my surroundings and identify any plants or mushrooms I can see. I use the linked app (Picture Mushroom) and also recommend Falling Fruit as apps to help you. After a while, its so fun to be on a walk with a friend and point out your favorite lemon tree, some wild fennel, or a false turkey tail mushroom (or whatever you find in your city!).

Bonus points as this is an actually usable skill if/when the apocalypse comes.

Also this is probably obvious but don't eat any mushrooms you find. I'm not above stealing an orange from a local tree though. happy snacking, don't die!

Sarah · Answer

a small goal instead of a hobby: I struggle to say "I do X as a hobby" because it feels...too big? Or like if I don't do it enough or at a certain level, I am faking?? I am instead a goal person. One of my goals this year was "grow one really big tomato starting from a seed," instead of "be a gardener." Maybe it sticks maybe it doesn't. Who cares! It means you end up trying a bunch of low stakes things. Also, a delight to accomplish your goal!

Meg · Answer

Binge watch the sky: Go all in on the vastness around and inside you. All. In.

Jackie Homan · Answer

Joining an adult synchronized skating team: In honor of synchro finally making it to the Olympics in 2030, a reflection on my favorite hobby:

As an adult, when I said I missed synchro, what I meant was I missed the scent of Garnier Fructis hair gel mixed with locker room sweat, and the gentle pulse of a thumb-shaped bruise on my bicep, and the auto-play movie that projects behind my eyelids when I go to sleep, where I am somehow both in my body and above it, monologuing each step in the program as a figment of myself performs it. I missed the all-encompassing, childlike feeling of my hobby as my identity.

In the locker room, my team and our coaches hold hands in a circle and pass a squeeze around, then scream together at the top of our lungs, an exorcism for nerves. As we walk single-file toward the rink, my coach high-fives each of us down the line. I step onto the ice and feel floaty, then try to remember to bend my knees. I don’t know how else to write about skating without sounding like a sixth-grader, because on the ice, I feel like a sixth-grader. I think maybe that’s a good thing.

At the end of the program, I cannot stop smiling. There is something special about trying hard at something that will never matter professionally or really at all.

Eric F · Answer

Playing Basketball 🏀: I play pick up games with a group of friends and shoot around solo with headphones on regularly. Basketball has taught me the benefits of practice and routine, has helped me stay in shape, and build friendships.

Go shoot some hoops.

Analisa Burns · Answer

Answering the phone to say that you can't talk right now: but you can call back in like an hour