Search this blog for “Hobbies” or “Hobby” and you’re greeted with 5 & 7 pages of results respectively. There’s been this lifestyle that goes back as far as I can remember where I’m a tinkerer with all kinds of different things often trying to plug this into that and while my goal isn’t profitability, I have experienced the luck of all of my hobbies turning into money-makers eventually. Just this week, I signed my first beer-related client and maybe the space of blending social media expertise with beer as a hobby will turn into something great.
Heather said last night, “You have too many hobbies.” and she said it in passing but it’s not the first time a girl has told me this. Not only do I have too many hobbies, I’m very thorough in all of them. Some people collect things and when they have some free time on Sunday afternoon, they’ll fire up eBay or browse craigslist for cool finds. They don’t buy 10 books on the subject, start a blog, join forums, setup eBay alerts and make it their job to literally collect “all of the things” in that hobby. There’s a reason I don’t get into stuff like Magic the Gathering as a hobby. I can’t afford it. I do stick with things I can afford to get into knowing how I approach life but the problem lately has been that I don’t really let things go and let them be free.
It used to be that I would pickup a new skill, let’s use Photography as an example. I’d start small, learn all I can and for about 2 years I’d get to a place where I’m very comfortable. Not a master, but very competent and then I’d just make that a part of my every day life. I could shoot photos, talk the talk, use Photoshop / Lightroom and win a few photo – essay contests. Now, I have a Canon 5D and a few lenses and I take photos every day. That is a hobby now that is internalized. The same sort of goes for beer. I don’t actively seek out the latest releases or setup trades or travel great lengths to wait in line for beers. I have a large cellar, drink when I feel like it and in moderation, don’t focus on numbers and do things outside of beer. I’ll always drink beer, I just won’t obsess over it like I did. It’s about 2 years of time per hobby before I enter a state of relaxation toward it.
My new hobbies though, the things I started and never finished or things I’m actively engaged with are really vast right now and if I suddenly didn’t have a job or friends but had a steady perpetual income of 10 grand a month for the next 2 years, I could literally do nothing but my hobbies and would stay completely busy. I know that’s wild and strange for some people but it’s true.
For some sort of sanity check on where I stand on things, I thought it might have some personal value in sharing here what I’m up to and maybe I can find areas where it’s fine to let-go on some things.
——-
Auto-Pilot Hobbies are up first. These are things I’ve been doing for years. At most, they take about 15 hours a week and I can run them naturally on lunch-breaks, right after work and when traveling without much effort:
Writing: I’ve been putting my thoughts to digital paper since the late-90s. Writing and blogging are my oldest hobbies after tinkering with electronics. I can easily convey what I want to say here and although I lack brevity, I am prolific and consistent in my style. There’s very little I won’t write about even if I never hit the publish button. You all see 90% of what I write and 10% remains a draft that my kids will read one day but may never be published to my server. I write a lot and that’s beyond the standard email, memos at work and IM conversations. I write long-form for about 30 minutes a day at least…sometimes an hour a day.
Photography: I started out with an HP digital Camera and then over to a Kodak DX around middle-school. I have an iPhoto Library with photos that go back to 2001 (Freshman in High School). Over the years, my equipment has become expensive but my workflow has remained consistent. I take a lot of photos, delete about 80% of these immediately, edit (Transform, adjust lighting, auto white balance) and then public 1/10 that I keep to Flickr (since 2005). My favorite photos I use in blogs and it’s my way to get free copyright free images that pair with blog posts and this has lead me to extensively use tags and other things to keep track of my photos. Flickr is my default storage medium online but iCloud, Backblaze and my Synology are full of over 100K photos that I’ve kept over the years…I’ve easily shot over a million in 15 years.
Gaming: You can consider me a casual-gamer. I usually pre-order 10 games a year from game stop and play them on and off. One night a week, I’m gaming. I watch Twitch broadcasts during lunch and I generally go back to old standbye games, Call of Duty (story mode), Forza, Civilization, Sim City and Pokemon. I’m actively a gamer but I don’t know what the latest and greatest games are, I just buy what sounds good and try it out. I have an Xbox One, 360, Wii U, 3DS and my iMac which can handle most games at mid-range settings pretty well
Cooking: This one might seem weird to new readers but to old readers, I spent a considerable amount of time and money in the culinary space as well as mixology space before and after my time in San Francisco. Lots of classes, books, hands-on time and time in bars / restaurants trying my best to gain experience. I sometimes forget my skill-set because I so rarely cook in an extravagant way anymore or maintain a home bar but in instances like Christmas where I cooked a 25 pound turkey and had people losing their minds over the quality and taste, I’m reminded that I am actually pretty good at this. I have my cast-iron skillets, my tools, my 8” Wusthof Chef’s knife and I can pretty much throw a meal together with what’s in the pantry. I didn’t take up Sous Vide yet but I will soon. That might lead me down a reemergence of the hobby from a time & cost perspective for a while until I get that under my belt and it goes back to Auto-Pilot.
Mixology: Before beer, I spent hours a week crafting cocktails for friends at home. Even when broke, I still had a few dozen bottles at home, tools, fresh fruit, special glassware I’d use to make drinks and I’d spend all night entertaining and creating. Not everything was great but eventually I eternalized it and was able to put it on the back-burner. Over time, as beer started costing more, I didn’t replenish bottles that were emptied and the hobby went on auto-pilot.
AudioPhile / High Quality Media: This one was a big focus for a while but I’ve luckily gotten out of that world. I still won’t stream music and won’t use crappy audio devices and listen to most of my music in high quality AAC, CD or FLAC and I use Digital to Analog Converters for audio playback of movies & music. It’s not something I’ve spoken about here in a while but the use of Shure products and high quality audio keeps me really happy. I’m spoiled by rich, vibrant sound pumped through monitor speaker / earphones without unnecessary bass. AudioPhile world is an expensive path so I’m pretty happy that I’m happy with my current quality. The same goes for film & TV. I have a system now. I buy blu-ray content, rip it to my NAS and play it back in 1080P 5.1. I’ll move to 4K / 7.1 once 4K Blu-Ray is more tangible (and cheaper) but I have no complaints with today’s setup.
——-
Transitional Hobbies are ones that I’m still very active in but they are nearing a place where I can simply put them on auto-pilot where I continue to read and learn new things but my monthly funny-money isn’t being devoted to it in any meaningful way:
Beer: Since January of 2012, I probably spent 40K USD toward my beer-hobby. I think it’s more but I think 40K is already going to freak people out. We’re talking about bottles in the hundreds to thousands of dollars that I got to drink with people I now call friends. I went to Belgium 4 times a year like clock work, regularly went to beer festivals in Europe and USA, put 20K miles a year on my car going to beer-events and trading with people. I also brew beer mostly to learn more about ingredients so I can rate beer more intelligently. I rated 1,000 beers a year every year since 2012. Now, I just drink the beers I have, buy the beers I’ll like and drink with the locals I know. While I still will go to Belgium once a year going forward, the hobby itself of driving, trading, traveling, buying alcohol for the ability to take 2-3 lines of notes is over. My beer blog will remain a thing, receiving all kinds of updates but the hobby is like many of my others. It’s on auto pilot now. This is nothing but a good thing because staying in the beer hobby meant i never would have been able to buy a home. It’s too expensive to be in the hobby and save money for someone like me who is obsessive and is all or nothing.
Coffee: I brewed my first coffee in 2008 and before that, was a die-hard Starbucks fan-boy. I headed up the Christmas Blend Fan Club and we grew quite large and I would receive perks from Starbucks once a year. Since 2008, I have grown the hobby \ a lot. My home coffee setup is vast now filing a large part of the kitchen and cabinets around the ‘coffee-spot’. While I can make coffee pretty easily in 5 different methods, I still struggle with espresso and am still taking my time at mastering the Syphon setup. I’d also like to eventually start roasting my own beans so the hobby is on auto-pilot but I still tweak it from time to time and add on to the expenses a bit. Plus, I spend $42 a month of coffee beans so it’s not a cheap hobby even if I’m not buying equipment.
——-
Active Hobbies are filling a lot of my time and this is starting to get into the pain-points for Heather and certainly adds additional stress to my time because I’m taking up new things that require a lot of time & money and yet not really reducing time spent on my other interests. As you all know, I upload photos to Flickr and posts to this blog more than I ever did but I continue to branch off into new areas:
The Golf R and the Volkswagen World: My 2013 Golf R remained unmodified for the years I had it but I used that experience to read a lot, learn a lot, do my own maintenance and attend some car-shows. I really started getting into the scene and when the MK7 platform shipped in Europe, I began researching what I’d do with a 2016 Golf R when I got one. Since August, I’ve put about 13 grand into my Golf R, I’ll be spending my summer at tracks and drag-strips improving my skills and tweaking my modifications to make the car faster and perform better on-road. I’m driving down in 2 weeks to North Carolina to attend a 4 day Golf R event, There’s four Volkswagen events between June & August I’ll be attending to compete for awards and I continue to remain active on forums, reddit and my blog in keeping things going. This hobby is far from slowing and I have a good feeling I’ll end up paying off this car and keeping it as a show-car for many years to come. It’s a fantastic vehicle and perfect in every way. The hobby is great but I spend roughly 10 hours a week doing things involving Volkswagen. After Wookies in the woods, I’ll be hosting some Volkswagen Drag-Races down in Epping NH among other enthusiasts.
The BMW R1200 GS Adventure: This one is brand new but motorbikes have always been something I appreciated and wanted to do but I wanted to wait until I was an age where I could afford to do it properly and safely. Just the riding gear alone cost me $1500 for things that would last and protect me. The bike itself is great but all of the little things like tires are expensive. Doing it right, generally means spending a bit more up front. It was $300 for the safety course, $100 more for the advanced course a month later, insurance is $500 a year and of course, a lot of time spent working on the bike and learning all of the ins and outs. I’ve already taken the plastic shelf completely off to get a better view of the inner-workings. I don’t even have my license yet. I think this will be avery pricey and time-consuming hobby.
YouTube & Video Editing: Since I got my Golf R, I’ve been putting out some videos and people really seem to like them. I’ve tripled my YouTube subscribers to 700 since August and I’m making about $100 a month in YouTube ads. I’ve learned a lot about video production. I shoot on my Canon 5D, GoPro Hero 4 Black, iPhone 6S and my 2-Channel DashCam and I put videos together that I think people will like. The response is good and the extra money certainly helps me keep going. While there’s no immediate spending needed, I did just buy a ton of gear to make Motovlogging on the motorcycle a possibility. A TomTom Bandit and a lot of hardware to connect my GoPro to my Shoei GT-Air along with the Bluetooth gear to record my voice into the videos I’m making while riding. The biggest expense now that I have all of the gear has been time. Editing takes a while and my videos still aren’t anywhere near amateur quality. I’ll keep tweaking it.
Home Networking, Servers, Computers: This has long been a hobby of mine and I’ve done it professionally as well but it never really goes into Auto-Pilot. Ever since I first took apart a MacPlus, LCIII and HP computers, I was hooked. Now, I run a full home network that rivals most small-office setups and I’m really proud of everything working together with so many of my computing tasks being automated. This year, I’ll buy a larger Synology NAS and rip more Blu-Rays to it. In a year or two, more smart-home accessories will be added to connect everything together with more home & property IP cameras that I can access from anywhere in the world. I have a feeling the computer thing as a hobby will never end.
Champagne: Heather and I went to Champagne France last year. While I’ll never be a “wine-person” I do really enjoy Champagne and we just save our pennies and buy it for cheap in Canada (30% off w/ exchange rate) or we do a trip to France every 18 months and stock up. I know the houses I like but there’s a lot more to learn, so much that I plan on learning French over the next 12 months. I remain ignorant as possible to Champagne within reason because to know a lot about it means to spend a lot of money. I want to remain an outlier in this world and not get too deep. I already have a growing collection of 1.5 / 3 liter Champagnes in the cellar. Need to stop while I’m ahead.
Sneakers: I’ll always be a sneaker-head. My first sneaker-dreams were the Jason Kidd basketball shoes in the 90s with the shiny reflective bug-eye. I’d still like to buy a pair of those for the memories. I buy a new pair of sneakers every month or two whether I need it or not. I don’t read sneaker blogs, I just buy things in stores that are on sale. Another example of a down-ward spiral if I let if get out of control.
——-
In summary, I have a lot going on. I don’t actually know what the point of this post will be on the outset, sort of a “I learned something today, guys” kind of moment. My long-time readers know how active I am and how I’m always trying new things. I have to eventually retire things, find a health balance in my time as an active person and learn to sort of take it easy on things. No one person with a full-time job, a girlfriend and a couple of friends not to mention a new puppy can reasonably have as many interests as me. People wonder why I don’t discover new music, stay on top of current events or know what’s going on in the world…well, I think it’s pretty clear why I’m too busy for pretty much everything. Heck, I don’t even really keep in contact with anyone I knew growing up and barely speak with family. When not working, all of my time is spent on hobbies.
Moving to a new house this month has sort of caught me off guard because 2-3 days would go by and I’d literally have no time for anything but work & unpacking and I’d log into a beer forum or car forum or motorcycle forum and see a lot of activity of people talking to me about things and I had let them down because I had other stuff to do. I forgot that I bought a ton of mead from a guy in Michigan and he was waiting for my box so he could get those to me or that I had promised some how-to videos for a Golf R owner or that I promised guys in Belgium I’d come over to pick-up 30 bottles of beer they had grabbed for me. Everything just sort of lost control from a perspective of time management.
Changes should happen but I’m not sure yet how to do that because when I retire one – hobby, another takes its place.
Thoughts?
3,140 words. I’m so sorry.