Music, manga, paddling, chess, bushcraft, birds, websites, weird instruments, road trips, astronomy, games, languages… this is the messy little map of the things I love doing, learning, collecting, and getting completely obsessed with.
Some are in rotation. Some I've done before. And some are sitting there waiting because I want to try them next. I collect hobbies, but I also collect the possibility of what I might learn to do.
Some hobbies live in my hands. Some take me outside. Some end up taking over a shelf. Some I return to after years away. Others are still just a note in the margin saying try this someday.
Once I start doing something, I start noticing everything connected to it.
The fun part is not keeping my interests organized. It's watching them collide.
I start because one thing catches my attention. Then I want to understand what is around it, try the skills connected to it, notice more, and follow whatever it leads to next.
Each hobby becomes a way into a bigger world.
I like hobbies where I can actually do something: learn a skill, go somewhere, build something, collect something, notice something, or get better at something.
I don't need one “main hobby.” The overlap is the interesting part.
This part changes. That is the point. These are the hobbies with actual fingerprints on them lately — the ones with gear on the floor, tabs open, notes scribbled, or another outing already in my head.
Canoeing. Paddleboarding. Camping. Bushcraft. Earth skills. Tracking. Plants. Birds. Quiet water. I like hobbies that turn a landscape from “somewhere pretty” into somewhere I can actually read.
Exploring new games, returning to old kinds of play, and having something I can pick up when I just want to disappear into another world for a bit.
Four players. Four armies. Alliances that may or may not last. I like how adding two more people turns a familiar game into something I have to read completely differently.
It shows up across the whole messy collection.
Some lifelong. Some new. Some seasonal. Some I'm still terrible at. They all count.
The things I do become the books, instruments, gear, tools, cameras, and odd little objects that follow me home.
because apparently hobbies also require shelves, drawers, gear walls, and an unreasonable number of little objects.
A book leads to a subject. A camera leads outside. An instrument leads to another sound. A trip leads to another place. There is never really an end to the map.