Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

Social dancer here -- without hyperbole this was a lifechanging hobby for the better, and while I haven't been able to "meaningfully contribute to" as a criteria, I am a much better person for it.

I'm primarily a salsa dancer (~18 years), but spent a few years doing a buncha other dances to get an understanding of the music and movement so I'm pretty much beginner-intermediate in a buncha other dances (equiv of 1-2 year level dancer) -- Bachata, West Coast Swing, Fusion, and a splash of a ton of other dances.

The best I can explain to most people is that dance is a conversation to a topic (music) through the language of motion instead of sound, and that just like rewarding conversations we can have through verbal language and text, some of the most resonant conversations can be had through connection and touch.

For the subset of folks who happen to be gamers here, this is a massively multiplayer co-op music game with a very high skill curve.

I started dancing due to taking a popular social dance series at college by Richard Powers, and that was the gateway for my lifelong dance practice. It allowed me to indulge in another side of collaborative music, gave me a good relationship with interpersonal connection and physical touch, and provided me with a fairly active and healthy hobby for my life.

Can't say enough good things about it, just that the skill curve for beginners is high -- the first year is known as beginner's hell, but once you establish a basic vocabulary in the dance it becomes so much more artistic and creative.

Perfumery.

It's something I got into a few years ago and has been a real eye-opener into the world of perfumery and our wonderful olfactory senses. Strangely, though I suspect is the case with many other hobbies, there is crossover with programming albeit somewhat abstractly.

Often it's about building abstractions and reusable components. For example let's say you wish to create an apple note (typically referred to as an accord). You're not tasked with creating the scent of an actual apple but rather the illusion of apple. This is done by mixing ingredients (usually referred to as raw materials) which are generally split into two categories, synthetic and natural, where a synthetic material if often just an isolated molecule and a natural material may be an oil extracted from nature or a tincture, among other kinds. Once you have mixed the raw materials and are happy with the result, you've essentially created a formula which is a reusable component that can then be used in one or many of your creations.

Aside from the creative process of making the actual perfume, you've then got a ton of applications in which to use it such as a fine fragrance, a candle, room spray, shower gel, shampoo, laundry detergent to name just a few.

With new raw materials becoming available all the time there are just endless possibilities as to what you can create and it, for me, has been a lot of fun both learning the craft and creating actual perfumes that I myself now wear.

I imagined everyone at these events independently classifying everyone else and just sort of nodding knowingly at each other about who the weirdos are.

And so the fact that I don't do that must mean that I'm one of the weirdos. And sure, it doesn't really matter other than it's a reason to avoid events.

I am not sure that is possible because I act as a buffer between him and my parents.

My other siblings drew a line, and they are miserable themselves because they can't help.

He is the kind of guy who will take a mortgage on my parents' house to do some sort of forex play because he has figured out the true intention of US oil policies and how that impacts South East Asian oil-supplying countries—and wants to bet everything on Brunei and Malaysian currency.

So, I am trying my best to divert his attention.

Watchmaker in training here - after 20 years in startups I am now in my first semester of watchmaking school. It is one of the hardest things I've done in my 47 years, and I am loving every minute of it. It is training my brain, hands, and eyes to see and do things I never thought possible.

Repairing a watch feels similar to dealing with code to me:

- observing to see how/why certain watch components/chunks of code work and interact with each other - analyzing performance - disassembling and cleaning parts/"cleaning" code - troubleshooting why something isn't working - repairing faults caused by the previous watchmaker/developer

I highly recommend it to anyone needing something physical to do after a day spent staring at a screen. Stare at a watch instead!