Did you return to past hobbies?

[mpeirce]

I’m not sure reading counts as a “hobby” but I’ve been reading almost as much as I did as a kid since I retired.

I also recently returned to playing chess. Chess.com makes it easy to find an opponent of appropriate skill virtually any time of day - from around the world.

 

[Alderman]

I like to spend time shooting guns and reloading my own ammunition. Since I’ve retired I started shooting air rifles to go along with my powder burner guns. Whole bunch of new stuff to learn to get the air rifles shooting like I want.

I collected chainsaws while I was working and have always enjoyed cutting firewood when I got the chance. Now I’ve got time to run a saw whenever I want.

 

[Physics Guy]

Blame It On the Boy Scouts!

Hello. My name is Keim, and I am a serial hobbyist. Pardon my length, as I have engaged in this behavior for a long time, but never talked about it.*

I have numerous how-to manuals related to my varied interests. I take on a hobby until I have a good general knowledge of how to do it, and then my enthusiasm wanes. I never completely drop the hobby, frequently revisiting as needed, but my interests move on for years at a time.

Below is a sampling of some of my hobbies over the years...

I am the same. Even my list of hobbies is similar!

 

[Coach Shoe]

Retirement and a new, adventurous wife made it possible to buy my 8th boat. They keep getting bigger and more costly. (The boat; not the wife). Covid has shut down our offshore plans but life is pretty good day sailing with friends:…enjoying sunsets & a decent bottle of wine. We're in no hurry to give it up.

 

[albireo13]

List of hobbies I love:

model rocketry
star gazing/telescopes
hiking
kayaking
kayak building
electronics

 

[SJhawkins]

I see something similar about many posts, most hobbies listed are what I would call "reasonable" dollar wise, expect for the boating people Been around many boats my entire life they can run all over the $$$ place, I'm sticking with my hand me down Alumacraft!

 

[Goonie]

I got into model railroading as a kid when I was about 9 years old. I've stuck with it for the past 56 years, and have enjoyed it thoroughly. Over the years, besides the modeling and building aspects of the hobby, I've started collecting vintage railroad models, and high quality, limited run models, as well as antique railroad lanterns from the two major railroads that ran through our town, only a couple of blocks from home.

After retiring I added gardening and landscaping to my list of hobbies. They keep me quite active out in the fresh air and sunshine about nine months out of the year, while proving enough fresh produce for us and our neighbors. And besides the produce, the neighbors enjoy walking through the gardens looking at all of the flora and fauna.

Cooking is another task that became one of my favorite hobbies since retiring. I absolutely love to cook! I use my mom's recipes, my grands' and great-grands' recipes, my own recipes that I've developed throughout my life, as well as recipes found everywhere else. I walk into my the kitchen and I enter my happy place! Besides my 95 y.o. mom, my neighbors and friends love it when I enter my happy place, because they know they're go to be recipients of some good eatin'!

I'm also a voracious reader, whether paper books or digital. It's how I start each morning before breakfast, and how I end the day, and usually work in some reading throughout the day.

Model Railroading, gardening & landscaping, cooking, and reading.......makes for a very enjoyable life!

 

[MC Rider]

I could think about model rockets again, model trains, maybe a canoe or kayak.
Does anyone use a rowboat these days?

 

[old medic]

Plan to continue with my same old hobbies.... just with more time to do them...

 

[Lsbcal]

I’m not sure reading counts as a “hobby” but I’ve been reading almost as much as I did as a kid since I retired.

I also recently returned to playing chess. Chess.com makes it easy to find an opponent of appropriate skill virtually any time of day - from around the world.

I like reading too but have only recently upped my hours. Tend towards mysteries and spy novels.

I started playing on-line chess too. Lichess is a good free site. But chess is a very competitive pastime and I struggle a lot just to get an average Lichess rating (mid 1500's). I'm very slow at moves, maybe 1 minute per move on average which is very slow for the current on-line "classical" crowd. I find that competition is only fun when I am winning.

I do enjoy gardening and it's a good way to get outdoors. There is no competition.

Plus I exercise most days with runs and walks. DW joins me on some walks. Fun to see the occasional coyote or fox and birds depending on the season.

 

[dm]

I started fishing again, but new to saltwater. It’s not like I needed another hobby, I already golf, and shoot sporting clays. But I sold my plane and bought a boat.

Here are a couple of pics of friends that were visiting last Monday. We caught quite a few fish, the one pic shows two caught on one hook. They said they are ready to go again, just call. We have more friends coming next week. I sure have become popular since I moved south.

 

[street]

Fishing is a great sport! Nice boat!

 

[scrabbler1]

The resurrection of 2 hobbies began when I first changed from working full-time to part-time back in 2001. One hobby was square dancing, something I hadn't done since 1988. I rejoined dancing at A-1, one level below the one I was at (A-2) when I stopped. I didn't remember the A-2 calls well enough. After a year back, I learned the A-2 calls again and stayed at that level until 2008, when I learned C-1, the next level up, and danced at that level until 2018, when our long-time caller (the great Lee Kopman) took ill and passed away at age 85.

Another hobby I resurrected was playing Strat-o-Matic baseball. I had played very little of it since 1988. I began playing it again in 2006, after finding an online forum which sparked my dormant interest in the game. I didn't become a big baseball fan again, as my cards were from the 1970s and 1980s, my baseball heyday.

Another hobby I began in 2001 was my involvement in the local school Scrabble program (see my screen name?) That expanded over the years until 2020, when Covid shut down the schools. But my involvement would have been endangered anyway due to the retirement and/or pregnancy in 2020 of several teachers I worked with. These teachers ran the school clubs I worked with.

In late 2018, I began playing the piano again, after a layoff since 2004. I play mostly ragtime, and I have resumed laying all or part of 8 rags. I don't play often, just enough to keep my skills at a decent level. Good thing I had kept my old sheet music including notes of small changes I made to make the songs more playable. I have perfect pitch, so I was able to use my tuning wrench to tune the piano and keep it tuned at will.

 

[2017ish]

No.

I did, however, start weight training for the first time ever (my HS football years predated serious weights).

That, and the planned travel (6 months of the year), were more than sufficient to occupy my time, when combined with the off-day long-distance hiking/walking that we started in the year before retiring.

 

[Coach Shoe]

DM- Nice boat … love the back yard dock. Makes spur of the moment outings feasible.

 

[doneat54]

Never left my hobbies (restoring and driving vintage cars, tinkering with pretty much everything and playing racquetball). Took up new ones after FIRE'ing; daily hiking and cooking. I like to cook, but I LOVE to eat....

 

[Lsbcal]

Never left my hobbies (restoring and driving vintage cars, tinkering with pretty much everything and playing racquetball). Took up new ones after FIRE'ing; daily hiking and cooking. I like to cook, but I LOVE to eat....

Never thought of eating as a hobby. But I love to do that hobby too.

 

[old medic]

I have always enjoyed smoking and cooking, we camp several times a year with a group doing old style Dutch Oven cooking over a fire... But now I'm doing most of the home cooking too.
Last night was Apple and Maple Sausage stuffed Acorn Squash.

 

[audreyh1]

The time is getting closer to a 2nd chapter. DW and I still like our jobs for the most part, but don't see doing it the rest of out lives. I realize we all need something to retire to, read about many stories over the years here.

My question to you folks, did you gravitate back to your old hobbies?

I have many lifetime hobbies I stay somewhat active in, hobbies that really would be perfect retirement hobbies. Always thought when the time came I ramp back up and become more active, at least that was a goal 20 years ago.

I would like to think I would become more active in my current hobbies, maybe start some new ones, etc. But then again if they were really important one would think I would make more time for them now then I do!

What say you, did you ramp back up into old hobbies, become more active in old/current hobbies?

I certainly retried some old hobbies, but mostly we developed new ones. Well not entirely, we were already heavily birdwatching a few years before retiring, and that drove several years of travel immediately after retiring. But that was a relatively new hobby compared to things I had done off and on for years.

As part of the first year of retiring I did a lot of hobby experimenting - old ones as well as things I anticipated enjoying. But we ended up loving things I hadn’t even considered before retiring, except for birdwatching/hiking, and got rid of most of the old hobbies as part of life simplification.

 

[Lsbcal]

I certainly retried some old hobbies, but mostly we developed new ones. Well not entirely, we were already heavily birdwatching a few years before retiring, and that drove several years of travel immediately after retiring. But that was a relatively new hobby compared to things I had done off and on for years.

As part of the first year of retiring I did a lot of hobby experimenting - old ones as well as things I anticipated enjoying. But we ended up loving things I hadn’t even considered before retiring, except for birdwatching/hiking, and got rid of most of the old hobbies as part of life simplification.

Curious to know what hobbies you dropped.

I did a lot of online chess last year but have stopped that this year. For some years I did plein air oil painting but don’t do that regularly now although I do watercolour sketches on trips.

 

[Goawayrain]

I returned to homebrewing and a little more hiking. And then I got gout. D'oh!

 

[audreyh1]

Curious to know what hobbies you dropped.

I did a lot of online chess last year but have stopped that this year. For some years I did plein air oil painting but don’t do that regularly now although I do watercolour sketches on trips.

Sailing, which was a big surprise, a whole lot of different handicrafts, gardening, some weekend sports.

The thing that really drove how our hobbies evolved after retiring was travel - we started traveling extensively, and traveling with a purpose - birdwatching, wildlife photography, being out in nature a lot.

Then I started thinking in terms of “streamlining” and dumped a bunch of old but familiar hobby clutter that didn’t support our main interests, and started developing new ones that did.

Some of my old hobbies were “escapist” in nature and that need went away.

 

[beaglemom]

I got into genealogy when I was only 13. It gave me time to spend with my DM, and I was enjoying the discovery of scandals (at 13, an ancestor who couldn't keep his pants buttoned was exciting!!!). I kept it up over the years, sometimes more and sometimes less. Since I retired 6 1/2 years ago, I have spent more time researching and connecting with distant "cousins". One day, I might even write a book!

My hobby too! Curious if you did any DNA testing and connected to cousins that way. I just got my results a few weeks ago and have numerous cousins showing up and also found a love child of my uncle who passed away a number of years ago. So fascinating!

 

[SecondAttempt]

I got involved with Angel Flight West, flying patients to far away medical treatments.

You are a true hero!

 

[SecondAttempt]

I’m not sure reading counts as a “hobby” but I’ve been reading almost as much as I did as a kid since I retired.

I say it counts. It's what we had when we were young.

I have dozens of scifi paperbacks to reread when I retire - Asimov, Heinlein, Niven, etc. I need the space but can't bear to toss them! Yes, ebooks. But they don't smell the same!