Sports, hobbies and activities

I think aside from the usual slow death in front of a tv or computer screen, the only real hobby I can think of is that I play guitar. Badly. By myself. I record riffs and tunes that I make up as I go along, telling myself that one of these days I'll manage to actually put some of this shit together into a legitimate song or two.
But I've been telling myself that for a few years now.
I self-sabotage and second-guess everything and keep telling myself that this isn't good enough, and that isn't good enough, and I curse the gods for the fact that I wasn't raised in a musically-inclined household, and I lament the fact that I'm only just now getting into this stuff as an old man, and then I scrap everything and restart.

So uh... yeah, I play videogames and watch tv.
 
Aye, I constantly find myself thinking "why didn't I just do this kinda shit earlier in life?" This is followed by a few hours of me coming up with the perfect plan of what I'd do if I could go back in time to age 3 with all my previously gained knowledge intact. Then I think "see, wasting hours on daydreams is what put you in this position dick ed!"
 
I'll third procrastination and hindsight as a hobby. Same story ya know;
Kicking myself I didn't do/stick to this or that when I were younger and then trying to motivate myself to take up different things when I usually wind up doing the same old, same old or half arsing it. I think it just goes with our age demographic.

Generally, most weekends I find myself going to the local with mates and watching sport or occasionally getting a carton for home and watching sport. I am basically a "couch sportsman".
Not sure that counts as a hobby but yeah I do look forward to having a few beers on the weekend after a hard weeks work that's for sure.

I also of course play video games...
 
Calshot said:
I practice historical fencing, though since I've been working so much I haven't really gone to practice in like 2 months.

I've been meaning to get back into unarmed martial arts. I was looking into sambo, BJJ, and Bang Muay Thai. Ideally, I'd like to do all 3 simultaneously, but that's unrealistic both from a logistics standpoint (only the BJJ place is close and the other two are a 30 minute drive on a good day) and a training acclimatization standpoint (can't jump from training 1 day a week to 5-6 instantly).
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Are there any gyms in your area that can offer all? I’ve always wanted to do Sambo, but can’t find any places near me ATM to do it. For now, I’m stuck with karate and kickboxing, which isn’t too bad
 
RyoHazuki84 said:
Are there any gyms in your area that can offer all? I’ve always wanted to do Sambo, but can’t find any places near me ATM to do it. For now, I’m stuck with karate and kickboxing, which isn’t too bad
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Yeah, there is a sambo place about a half an hour away from me.

If you haven't already, check out this map. It's how I found the gym closest to me and all of them have been verified by other sambo guys.

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewe...6&ll=15.852559320882445,2.936670149999941&z=2
 
I still like the idea of sports but I don't really follow or play them anymore.

As for hobbies? I study Japanese. Of course I taught myself standard dialect cuz that's the sane thing to do, but I'm quite fond of dialects and "Where are you from and what do they speak there?" is always the first thing I ask Japanese people. Right now I really like Nagasaki dialect, Tsugaru dialect, and Kansai dialect, which is the dialect I can understand the most of because its used a lot in Japanese comedy and internet culture. Not that I'm great at Kansai dialect or anything.
On top of the weird variations in word endings etc the regional differences in pitch accent are :love:.

My other main hobby is music. I listen to a ton of it, play guitar, and write pop songs. Most genres are good by me, but I'm particularly into stuff from the 60s(psychedlia, baroque pop, regular pop, whatever it is that Serge Gainsbourg was doing) and stuff from the 90s(alt rock, hip hop, pop, eurodance, shibuya-kei).

Related to the study of Japanese is idol groups which I didn't get into until I started studying. I'm not as big on them now as I used to be, but I still enjoy their TV shows regularly. Nogizaka and Keyakizaka are the best at the moment.

That's about it really. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
Shenmue AM2 Podcast said:
I used to love playing Tennis. i still do, I just no longer have the time to get out and play. I think that tennis video games are the best adaptation of a sport into a video game. Tennis 2K2 was such a great game!
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Never played tennis but I'll second that 2K2 was the shit. It and Blades of Steel for the NES are the only 2 sports games I ever enjoyed.

Mr. OL said:
I self-sabotage and second-guess everything and keep telling myself that this isn't good enough, and that isn't good enough, and I curse the gods for the fact that I wasn't raised in a musically-inclined household
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Mr. OL said:
I lament the fact that I'm only just now getting into this stuff as an old man, and then I scrap everything and restart.
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Mittens2317 said:
Aye, I constantly find myself thinking "why didn't I just do this kinda shit earlier in life?" This is followed by a few hours of me coming up with the perfect plan of what I'd do if I could go back in time to age 3 with all my previously gained knowledge intact. Then I think "see, wasting hours on daydreams is what put you in this position dick ed!"
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SaM_4000 said:
Kicking myself I didn't do/stick to this or that when I were younger and then trying to motivate myself to take up different things when I usually wind up doing the same old, same old or half arsing it. I think it just goes with our age demographic.
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I can relate to a lot of what's being said, the only major difference being that I actually did pursue my interests at a relatively young age and dedicated a substantial amount of my time training in them only to stop completely around age 20.

In the 10 or so years that followed I thought about getting back into stuff several times but had this nagging doubt that I shouldn't because I'd never be as good as I was so why bother? I allowed it to shut me down every time and it only got worse as time went on.

koHVsDo.png

"I could be reworked, but I'll never be top of the line again. I'd rather be nothing."

Like this scene in Alien 3 but much more dramatic obviously.

I eventually addressed this way of thinking by chance. Someone I knew had recently got into running but was lamenting their progress, I was trying to encourage them and rolled out the old "you're lapping everyone sitting on the couch" platitude and it hit me how hypocritical and arrogant it was of me to think that it somehow didn't apply to me.
 
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I enjoy swimming, I visit the cold water springs here in Florida more than the beach. I think it is easy for tourists to overlook the springs we have here. Video I took at Ponce De Leon springs, you can see fish as well.

 
I'll occasionally pull out the Yamaha synth keyboard and just play something random, depending on the mood. Can't write music for shit but I can just play around with the sounds. Find the process soothing and fun. I should really get around to sorting lessons out.

I've been doing a lot of long hiking around the countryside lately in groups. Go for dog walks. Played some football with my new mate. I'd enjoy playing some badminton, just got to find someone to do it with (since everyone can't be arsed, apparently). I used to play basketball and did various martial arts over the years (Japanese Jiujitsu, Judo, Taekwondo, Kendo and Ninjitsu) which is fun to do. Go to the gym nowadays instead.

I really enjoy art and history and visiting galleries and museums as well, had some good dates there too.

Music, I have a passion for electronic music of all varieties - trance, techno, house, synthwave, vaporwave, witch house/darkwave, upbeat, eurodance, 90s pop, 80s synthpop, film music, game music. I've been to plenty of music events in Manchester now and always on the lookout to going to more!

I have a love for travelling as well, been Monaco and Nice earlier in the year and going to Toronto and Washington D.C. (never been to North America before, just been around Europe mainly) in a month, so looking forward to that. I do a lot of things solo since I have so few friends nowadays (moved away or they've settled down). I'd never do anything if I just stayed in waiting on some of them to go out.
 
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Henry Spencer said:
I'll occasionally pull out the Yamaha synth keyboard and just play something random, depending on the mood. Can't write music for shit but I can just play around with the sounds. Find the process soothing and fun. I should really get around to sorting lessons out.

I've been doing a lot of long hiking around the countryside lately in groups. Go for dog walks. Played some football with my new mate. I'd enjoy playing some badminton, just got to find someone to do it with (since everyone can't be arsed, apparently). I used to play basketball and did various martial arts over the years (Japanese Jiujitsu, Judo, Taekwondo, Kendo and Ninjitsu) which is fun to do. Go to the gym nowadays instead.

I really enjoy art and history and visiting galleries and museums as well, had some good dates there too.

Music, I have a passion for electronic music of all varieties - trance, techno, house, synthwave, vaporwave, witch house/darkwave, upbeat, eurodance, 90s pop, 80s synthpop, film music, game music. I've been to plenty of music events in Manchester now and always on the lookout to going to more!

I have a love for travelling as well, been Monaco and Nice earlier in the year and going to Toronto and Washington D.C. (never been to North America before, just been around Europe mainly) in a month, so looking forward to that. I do a lot of things solo since I have so few friends nowadays (moved away or they've settled down). I'd never do anything if I just stayed in waiting on some of them to go out.
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We like the same music :) I saw aly and fila in Washington DC and Cosmic Gate in New York.



This was my video seeing Aly and Fila in DC


Dash Berlin
 
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I'm married and have 4 kids, one of them with special needs. This makes things like "hobbies" a bit limiting. However, when I have the time, I try to make content for my YouTube channel. I enjoy a variety of different video games but also enjoy learning about the paranormal.
 
Oregon Pacifist said:
I'm married and have 4 kids, one of them with special needs. This makes things like "hobbies" a bit limiting. However, when I have the time, I try to make content for my YouTube channel. I enjoy a variety of different video games but also enjoy learning about the paranormal.
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My youngest brother is of the autism spectrum and thankfully, he LOVES video games. It was our gateway to communication with him. He still plays retro games (he is 31). He can go through Mike Tyson’s Punch Out like a walk in the park and is one of the few people I know that can bear Ninja Turtles on NES.

When we have friends over, we have him speed run retro games just to prove that certain games are beatable
 
RyoHazuki84 said:
My youngest brother is of the autism spectrum and thankfully, he LOVES video games. It was our gateway to communication with him. He still plays retro games (he is 31). He can go through Mike Tyson’s Punch Out like a walk in the park and is one of the few people I know that can bear Ninja Turtles on NES.

When we have friends over, we have him speed run retro games just to prove that certain games are beatable
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My younger brother is on the Autism Spectrum & used to really enjoy video games. Not so much any more but he's still a dab hand at any Call of Duty going. He shoots things I can't even see and then it pops up he's killed someone.

He's more into his Warhammer & is really good at it. He's got an attention to detail for it, has basically memorised the rulebook and his models look great.

I also spent time in a school working with children on the spectrum & some of the stuff they can do is amazing. We had one lad crash the whole school ICT system because he wanted to find out if he could.
 
spud1897 said:
I also spent time in a school working with children on the spectrum & some of the stuff they can do is amazing. We had one lad crash the whole school ICT system because he wanted to find out if he could.
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I actually did this in school. Surprisingly enough I didn't get in nearly as much trouble as I thought I would.
 
DigitalDuck said:
I actually did this in school. Surprisingly enough I didn't get in nearly as much trouble as I thought I would.
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The lad who did in our school didn't get in that much trouble either. Instead we put him on the Computing GCSE which he really liked. He's probably working for MI5 or someone like that now.
 
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