One of my good pals is borderline obsessed with plants and gardening.
And when he started getting really into it, I thought to myself, “how boring!”
But now that I’m a little bit older…I think he was on to something.
Because plants are awesome are gardening isn’t boring at all!
What hobbies are considered boring but really aren’t at all?
AskReddit users shared their thoughts.
1. A good one!
“Language learning.
It’s a really fun process although sometimes it can feel like a grind.”
2. Just like Mr. Miyagi.
“Bonsai.
I thought it would be a nice little jaunt since you only have to look after them like 3 times a year and major attention every few years as long as you water and fertilize regularly.
Lies. All lies.
Days planning and diagramming how I’m going to f**k up this tiny tree I’ve invested years in. Multiple books bought and read.
Then like 12 f**king hours wiring up this tree and painstakingly watching to see if the apex is gonna do what I want or if that Jin is going to f**king work out.
I grow orchids. I thought they were b*tchy. I had not yet experienced the wrath of a juniper in a place that does not hit freezing temps.”
3. Mapmaker.
“Making detailed and realistic maps.
I grew up poor so to entertain myself I used to draw very realistic maps and play imaginary scenarios based on the map.
Eventually my family got a computer and I started using google sketch up to make maps and flags.
Now as an adult with a good paying job, I play EU4, HoI4 and CK2.
But I still enjoy making maps whenever I have a pencil and a blank paper. Imagination has no limits.”
4. Sounds good to me.
“Finding cool rocks. No joke.
You get to walk about, seeing cool things, breathing fresh air, and you get a geology lesson.”
5. I’d like to try this.
“Painting.
You’re constantly adapting to what the paint is doing, thinking, using your intuition, and you’re a lot more active than you appear to be.”
6. Playlists for days.
“I don’t know if this qualifies as a “hobby”, but I love making Spotify playlists for super obscure themes, like “the summer of 1997” or “the feeling you get when you realize you are driving too fast and it’s raining” or “these would make a good soundtrack for a zombie movie”.
I’m currently working on a playlist of songs to play a stranded Victorian era time traveler to get them up to speed on 21st century American musical culture.”
7. Can’t stop, won’t stop.
“Woodworking with hand tools.
I’m addicted and have bought 5 hand planes and can’t stop.”
8. Knittin’.
“Actually, knitting.
If you can do it right it’s actually fun.
Note that you’ll probably rage quit if you get it wrong.”
9. A green thumb.
“Raising plants, particularly succulents, has been way more eventful and exciting than I expected it to be.
I always thought raising plants was like this thing where you water something every day and then six months later it grows an inch and that’s it.
But I have a decent collection of different plants now, and they all have their own needs, their own unique behaviors, they’re different ages and so some flower and some don’t yet, they express their needs in different ways, and they change and move around much faster than you might expect. I’ve got some that are eternal and unchanging of course, but many more that are different every day.
I’ve got one plant that is so fast it can practically dance, and if it needs more light I’ll find it twisted into a completely different position every day until I move it somewhere more sunny and it settles down.
Not to mention by gaining an interest in plants, I’ve started paying attention to the plants around me in my neighborhood as I walk my dog, and I’ve started cataloging all the different flowers and weeds and shrubs I find. I’ve even found a few wild-growing succulents that I’ve taken samples of and am now cultivating at home, one of which even bloomed and gave me seeds which I’m going to try to grow!
It’s been so much fun and very educational.”
10. Aerial combat.
“Bird watching.
Sometimes you see aerial combat taking place with these birds, especially crows against hawks.”
11. Highly recommended.
“Geocaching.
I started this when my then GF and I were dirt poor in college and now we have logged about 1700 caches in about a dozen different countries.
Even just doing it near our home is awesome, because you get to see things you’d never see otherwise.
Highly recommend.”
12. Explore the night sky.
“Astronomy.
I got my first look through a telescope at 13 yo. My school had its own little observatory, and a few of us (mostly those specialising in physics or maths for A-level) were in the Astronomy Club. What hooked me wasn’t the stars, it was the planets.
Even with quite a lot of light pollution there was, for me, something magical about being able to look at the moon as if you were hovering just a short distance above its surface. And the planets all have their own charms. Jupiter is perhaps the most interesting, both in terms of the planet itself and in terms of its moons: I love checking that the moons are where they’re meant to be – I think of them as a sort of clock.
I know that I’m doing nothing more significant than checking the observations that others have made before me, and verifying what others have already calculated, but I feel that in some small way I’m helping to continue the validation of the great work of others. And like many others, I have my little patches of lunar geography that I watch pretty regularly, just in case anything has changed.
I suppose it’s not exciting, but it’s interesting to see our neighbor as the light and shadows change.”
What “boring” hobbies do you think are actually pretty awesome!
Talk to us in the comments.
We’d love to hear from you!
