What HOBBIES are you struggling with?

Maybe it's because I just turned 39, but I have realized that stamp collecting ruins lives and devours souls.

Sometime around 1985 or so, my grandma got me a philately starter set. It had a bunch of random stamps in it, maybe 50. It was all I ever needed at the time. I think of this period as he Golden Age of Stamp Collecting.

As I grew older, I wound up throwing the stamps away because I realized that I only had one pair of eyes and there was no possible way for me to see all of the stamps at one time. They were destroying my life, I simply had too many. It disgusts me that there are people that have these giant stamp collections, how could you ever get the most out of each one.

Now my kids have stamps. River and Scarlett are both allowed to have one stamp. They do not need any more. River's is a Spider-Man 2 one we got over the summer that I didn't need to mail a letter. Scarlett's is actually a Frozen sticker, but she is too small to know the difference yet.

Now I must atone for my decadence by flagellating myself. Pardon me.

Pro wrestling. With Punk and Bryan having been out for most of the year the product has been really stagnant. Lesner, the world champ, being totally absent is odd. Busting up The Shield was good, Ambrose and Rollins are settling into upper card spots, but it feels like all year we've been watching the same matchups. At least Golddust and Stardust are the champs.

Bull, it seems to me that the solution is clear. All you really need is a VHS cassette of Wrestlemania 3. That was the best wrestling ever was, why fritter your life away on lesser wrestling?

I am struggling with weightlifting these days, because I am getting old and it's a bit of a challenge to maintain muscle mass. When I don't have time for a full workout, I get by with a couple of sets of pull-ups and dips, followed by a few laps in the pool for some cardio.

So I don't get it, is this just a mean spirited troll post about Jeff White?

I think it is...


But, I do think there is an interesting notion behind it...How many hobbies have you gone through? What was the reason for picking it up in the first place? What made you stop?

Hobbies I think are transient in a person's life so I don't see boardgames as being anything different. I know I've started dozens, and stopped dozens myself. Some were driven by friends at the time and their activities and was something to do, others because I found it interesting, relaxing, diverting at the time.

Tonight my wife read in a magazine we received in the mail today that one of the burbs around here has their own symphony orchestra and lately I've been thinking about pulling my violin out and playing again. But there's a time commitment and with limited time somethings got to give.

So why is it so hard to move away from boardgames as a hobby where for me so many others have started and stopped over the years? Is it THE hobby for me? If not what's going to overtake that limited time I have for a hobby? Start reading again? Assemble the table for the model railroading stuff I have in a box in storage? Figure out just where I put my old baseball cards and comic books? Finish some of the dozens of video games I have kicking around?

Man, the amount of hobbies I've gone through. I was super into anime at one time, that progressed into Japanese toys, mostly pricey collector items. I was on a crazy DVD collecting kick many years ago, I have over 800, most in storage. I played airsoft, built my own guns (very expensive, I own a scratch-built one that cost me around $2k), had the best gear. Between my console playing periods, I played PC games. I had a fuckawesome home theatre system, cost close to six grand. Bought a lot of Mega Bloks Halo sets, and some Lego Star Wars too. Hrm, Magic: The Gathering, Dark Horse comics, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and other stuff when I was a kid. I know I'm forgetting plenty of things I used to like.

Currently, it's boardgaming and playing my Xbox 360, with some My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic mixed in.

No, I'm not being mean- I respect Jeff's feelings, just poking a little fun since he seemed to be kind of down about games right now. Too much heavy thoughts about it, less seriousness needed. I think he'll get the joke as intended.

Jeff will get it. The funny thing is that he was kind of sniped about talking about this in a broader thread, so he created a specific one on the subject and... Bam!

But that 'Eating Christmas in the Kalahari' approach usually works well to get someone out of the doldrums.

Michael Barnes wrote: Bull, it seems to me that the solution is clear. All you really need is a VHS cassette of Wrestlemania 3. That was the best wrestling ever was, why fritter your life away on lesser wrestling?

I have hundreds of classic wrestling videos, but there's an appeal about keeping with the current product. You can talk with friends about things that happened and what might happen, where with classic, it's all about sharing things they might not have seen. It's not a very good era, they've been going really downhill since Punk lost the title back in Jan 2013, his work from then until he left felt half-hearted. This was shaping up the be Daniel Bryan's year, but he got sidelined with some major injuries and he's looking like he'll be out well into next year. To me, those were the top two reasons to watch, and they've really been scrambling since with Orton vs. Cena 5 times on PPV so far this year. There're good things happening, but they're sparse.

I find I just don't get the same jolt of adrenaline from buying plastic nerd shit that I used to. The other day I even bought an epic awesome nerd thing that was a thing from when I was 12 mashed up with a cartoon made for 30 year old adults and it only won all the internets for a few minutes before it was just sitting on a shelf with a bunch of other bullshit I spent money on in an attempt to recapture my lost youth. Fortunately they announced that in six years there will be a movie based on a comic book I used to read so that will once again give my sad existence meaning. Amazeballs.

I used to get hung up on hobbies, but with the impending job takeover by robots in the upcoming decades...eh, why sweat it?

I figure we'll have all the time in the world to invest in hobbies, but we'll actually just sit on our asses, consume even more mass media, and choke the shit out of the planet with worthless junk we'll crap out on 3d printers.

How's that for a pick you up?

EDIT: To be honest, WM3 is pretty much perfect. Easily the best spectacle and Savage v Steamboat is one of the all-time greatest matches. The only PPV I rate higher is AAA's When Worlds Collide (94).

I'm struggling with 6 warmachine models staring me in the face because they want painted, but I just can't make myself care enough about Warmachine to paint them.

In the end I'll probably slop some paint on them just to make the voices stop.

Oh boy, did hotseatgames nail it. I didn't even realize I had a struggle until reading that post about painting minis. I love to have painted figures but don't get much joy out of actually painting them. That feels like work and I hear the voices too. After jamming on some Dungeon Command recently I broke out my D&D adventure system games and basked in all the plastic unpainted masses. They call to me. Lo, they do call to me and bid me take my place among them, in the halls of Vallejo.

My current hobbies that I've been pretty active with are:

Headphones. I have a half dozen various headphones now.
Vintage Audio: I've been collecting LP's for several decades, and I like old vintage 70's audio.
Photography: Been ramping up on some new stuff this year and getting out there and taking lots of cool stuff.
D&D and AD&D collecting: I've been collecting old D&D stuff since well forever, but this year since the boardgames selection has been a bit lackluster, I've gone back to my wish list of D&D stuff and buying things here and there.
LP's: Recently have ramped up my Texas Punk collection. Added a few Judy's and Big Boy albums. They are frickin' hard to find even on ebay. But I get one here and there.


My struggling hobbies:

DiscGolf. Geesh, with these two youngin's I've not had a lot of time to get much discgolfing in. I need to rectify that.

Boardgames: Same deal, haven't been playing as much as I'd like. I get about one to two good sessions in a month right now. Hoping to increase that in 2015

Beer: SInce getting married and having these wee ones, I've become somewhat of a tea-totter lately. My quality beer consumption has gone done quite a bit.

Movies: I've missed both of the Austin area film festivals in the last couple years, and I am hard pressed to see a movie in the theater.

VW's: I sold my VW bug two years ago, as I am hoping to find a decent Type III to rebuild. Haven't had much luck or time in that department.