I was pretty nerdy until my mid 20s and just had a couple long-term monogamous relationships. I played lots of video games and did random nerdy things like build model airplanes.
Then in grad school, my long-term GF broke up with me and I decided to get my life together and I had a major glowup. I started dating tons of women, mostly from dating apps, and I was pretty good at it! Good looking, high achieving women doing cool, sexy things. My post-grad school job was in a major city with tons of hotties and I also traveled around the world a lot for work, and my main off-work activity basically became fricking women. I got kind of addicted to this. I liked it, partly because chasing and having s*x with attractive women is per se great, but also there's enough of a challenge in it that it's not a foregone conclusion that I can frick some hottie, and with work/dedication you can get a lot better at it.
Eventually I met my wife and now we have a kid so obviously I cannot do this any more. But it was so much fun! I need a replacement hobby that has (1) challenging myself, (2) has difficult but achievable milestones/objectives, (3) feels like there's some progression/you can level up, (4) takes some innate talent + work to be good at.
Some things that I've tried that don't really work:
1. Video games. Fine, but I don't respect other video game players enough to care about beating them.
2. Music: I'm decent but I feel like there's no real space between fricking around in your garage (which is not serious enough for what I want) and being a professional (which is way too serious/I'm not good enough)
3. Running/biking/sports: Fine but I want something that is a little more intellectual too.
4. Ceramics: It's all foids, who can be motivated by this??
5. Trolling online: It's fun, I think about making a big anon twitter account, but I want to feel like I'm doing something of value.
Any suggestions???
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Birding (cc: @T3D_SIMP, !birdposters) - its like playing pokemon IRL and its a fun challenge trying to fill your life list (the bird equivalent of a pokedex). It's also a great motivator to go traveling by yourself when you otherwise wouldnt. Not sure if it fulfills criteria #4, but it does require a bit of self-determination to find rare birds.
DIY home improvement (!homeowners) is another fun, but much more challenging hobby that I also enjoy. Im too chickenshit to do anything involving knocking down whole walls, but im proud of myself for doing my own recessed lighting in my living room not long ago.
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The Merlin app is pretty good for this since you can track what you've seen on a life list plus it has both photo and sound ID.
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you stare at birds long enough some frick shit can happen you don't want to end up like me
getting a old car running is prety cool also musical instrument you can join a less serious wind ensemble or orchestrer or whatev
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Bird watching but you gotta kill the birds for it to count
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If you watched The Big Year, that's exactly how birding used to be till the Migratory Bird Treaty of 1917 made that illegal.
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I haven't no, that was just an intrusive thought I had when you compared bird watching to pokemon
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