Hobbying Again

A lot has happened in the past few months. I graduated from university, acquired a j*b, and experienced the last three-month summer break of my life.

During this time, I came to realise a number of things, of which the biggest was that programming had almost completely taken over my free time. And I don’t mean the programming I do for university assignments or work, I mean programming as a hobby.

I started programming way back in 2020, when COVID was at its worst and schools pivoted to online learning, providing students with plenty of opportunities to slack off while teachers were unable to observe their activities. My preferred method of procrastination at the time was to play RimWorld nearly every waking hour, and before long I found myself writing mods for the game ¹.

In the relatively short span of a year or so, I went from not knowing what a variable was to studying computer science at university. My habit of hyperfixation latched on to this newfound fascination with programming, and I started using it as a means of procrastinating other tasks — including other programming tasks ².

Unfortunately, this spelled disaster for most of my other forms of entertainment, including but not limited to reading, gaming, composing and playing music, LEGO, and watching movies or shows.

Reading in particular was disproportionately impacted, probably because it one of my more frequent activities besides gaming. Whereas earlier I’d burn through a couple of books a week, by the time I joined university I had stopped reading books almost entirely.

Actually, that’s not quite true — I did read throughout my time at university, just not anything other than manga and webtoons. And while there’s some great literature to be found in there, the varying quality of unofficial scanlations and constant recycling of the same few isekai plotlines leaves a lot to be desired. I’m officially sick of reading stories about an overpowered teenage student or overworked wagie being summoned to a medieval-era world with magic or other RPG mechanics.

Anyways. One of the triggers for having this realisation in the first place was getting to know and spending more time with people who actively pursued hobbies other than programming or gaming in my final year. As it turns out, having friends with a variety of interests is a great way to discover said interests and develop new hobbies. Who could’ve thunk it, really.

Although it’s not just that — in the past eight months or so I’ve had a surplus of time that has been incredibly hard to come by during my degree. And since I’m now living in a different country to most of my friends, I’ll have to make some new ones, which is rather difficult if all I ever do is sit at home and code all day.

So now here I am, trying to pick up the hobbies I had abandoned so long ago and unlearning that pesky habit of rushing to my phone or laptop upon encountering the first sign of boredom.

For starters, I’ve taken up blogging and writing music reviews, which has been a really enjoyable experience so far. That said, it’s something of a double-edged sword since my website is entirely custom-built, making it laughably easy to sidetrack myself from blogging with “just one more feature bro”. But that’s a problem for future me.

I also bought myself a Kindle, which has done wonders for my motivation to read, as I:

• No longer need to carry physical books or make space to store them (although there is still something nice about the feeling of actual paper on your hands),
• Don’t have to strain my eyes trying to read from a phone screen,
• And can acquire any book I want at any time (I mean 🏴‍☠️ of course; I would never purchase books from Amazon).

Not to mention that spending money on something also makes me more likely to use it than let it collect dust, so there’s that. As of writing this I’ve already read three books on it and will probably read another one soonish. Good progress, considering I’ve only read around four other books this year and practically none the previous three years.

I’ve been gaming more too, and not just the same old ones. One of my best friends recommended Mass Effect to me not too long ago, which I absolutely loved and would highly recommend to anyone looking for action-RPGs with a complex and emotional story line. I’m hoping to also revisit Skyrim and RimWorld again, both of which I haven’t touched since 2023.

And there’s still more hobbies to get back into, of course (sadly, they’re like Tasks ™ — there’s always more to do). I’ll probably join a band or music group, although that’ll have to wait until after I’ve started my job and have a decent idea of my schedule. And I plan to buy more LEGO sets to make my living space appear less bleak. But for now, this is a good start.