Going on a walk regularly.
a little bit of exercise is amazing for mental health. just half an hour, 2 or 3 times a week makes a massive difference
… 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.
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.
Petting kitties.
Eating kitties…
… I mean, making stupid jokes nobody understand. It works for me at least.
We understand
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?
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.
It probably only costs like $10 to get a measured line professionally tattooed on your leg/thigh for reference.
Anything one meter long swinging on a pivot is a 1 meter pendulum no?
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.
⌚
Sex. It can be really enjoyable, it’s a good workout, and you get to meet new people.
League of Legends /s
Yeah, totally! The best answer so far!
Only (former) League players will understand.
Lol
That is indeed the correct abbreviation
Cooking, it is satisfying enjoying the fruits of your labor and with cooking you can get that satisfaction every day if you choose.
This is not an everyone thing: I for one get no satisfaction from it.
Hard disagree. The process is fun, and everyone loves to eat, but the cleanup is drudgery at its basest form.
Tidy as you go. Don’t see it as a separate task. Tidying up is part of the cooking process.
That’s what I do - I clean as I cook because I’ve got ADHD and I will never conquer a big pile of dirty cookware… clean one at a time so it’s never an imposing task.
Implement the golden rule: cooks don’t clean.
I prefer to be the one doing the cleaning so I don’t have to feel limited in what or how I cook in other to be considerate to the person cleaning up, otherwise it adds an element of stress I don’t need and an artificial constraint.
My cats aren’t gonna do the dishes
totally agree, home cooking from a variety of fresh ingredients is great for your gut and mental health
Cooking can be fun, but it’s also a chore. It means
- finding 14 meals a week (sure you can have the same meal twice, but you still need to prepare that)
- making sure that your mealplan is at least a bit balanced
- groceries
- cooking
- dishes
And you do that every week of your life. I get it that cooking can be fun, but not the everyday cooking you need to do to survive.
I tend to cook larger meals and I’m not opposed to just chucking shit in a slow cooker to make a stew thing. I generally cook (complexly) three times a week. On Sundays we usually make something to last a few days (especially as my partner suffers from migraines) and we keep emergency meal stuff around like sausages to pan fry for a simple dinner.
I, personally, don’t really count pan frying some frozen perogies, eggs, or sausage as a “hobby” cook - that’s just ten minutes on auto pilot to achieve sustenance… so I guess my personal suggestion for fun cookery is to start with one big meal a week and step up from there as you’re comfortable. There are plenty of great recipes that you can cook a bunch of then enjoy over the next few days.
I need to feel productive. Be it a programming project or woodworking. Just creating something new instead of maintenance like oil changes and mowing the lawn. Creating something new.
Also, take a walk in the forest. Get out on the water. Both are great therapy to disconnect from the mental todo-list of things going on around the house.
Renting a paddleboard and just chilling on a lake on a sunny day. It really is a kind of heaven.
talking to people. friends, strangers, idc. people seem too stiff these days and i think it keeps people lonely.
Yoga/mobility/flexibility of some sort. Counteract the repetitive, static positions many of us hold during work hours.
Photography maybe, you go on walks and travel, forces you to observe the world around you.
Cooking and working out. Proper nutrition and taking care of your body make a huge difference, along with reading.
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.
Daily walks are so simple but getting out does wonders
I agree, especially if it’s not in a built up area. There definitely something about being able to see the horizon.
Even if it’s inner city, getting out and being around a different energy than being alone in the apartment is so helpful. It’s difficult to get moving though
