Ask HN: What's your favourite hobby and how did it start?

Not the healthiest of hobbies but I stumbled into DOTA (the league of legends precursor) 20 years ago and have never fallen out of love.

It's been a dangerous addiction at several points of my life, but in many ways has revealed to me more insight about myself than any other activity.

There is so much variation and nuance, there's always something to learn. For a naturally curious and slightly competitive person, it's quite an intoxicating cocktail.

BJJ is great. I wrestled folkstyle in high school, and then transitioned to BJJ and submission wrestling as an adult. It's a ton of fun and a great workout. Can't recommend highly enough.

I only got out of it because of a combination of A. lack of time, and B. injuries (note: the injuries were more from mountain biking than from BJJ, but I did tear a hip adductor muscle once in BJJ training).

Woodworking - It started when someone on my work slack posted an image of an arcade machine they had made. I thought "I want one of those". So I borrowed a circular saw and made one. Then I was hooked. Now I'm doing lots of home improvements, such as building a coffee bar and converting an unused area into a pantry. I'm currently building some shop furniture, then I'll be converting an unused cupboard near our entry way into a mud room.

The two downsides are: * It's easy to want to buy all the shiniest tools, which are expensive * I don't want to buy furniture anymore, I want to make it. But there just aren't enough hours in the day.

Music is a fantastic option. I've always loved listening but didn't dig into it for a long time. I imagined myself getting into synthesizers and DAWs and figured I didn't need another hobby that keeps me at the workbench or computer. During the pandemic I decided to buy a bass guitar and it turns out there is something to these analog instruments after all. A key part of it for me was intentionally avoiding electronics like pedals or obsessing over amps and pickups. Being able to grab an acoustic and play some tunes around the firepit has been great.

You should take an introduction to sewing class, which should basically walk you through the main functions of a standard sewing machine. Then you can go down the rabbit hole of early to mid 20th century antique sewing machines and ponder the downfall of manufacturing once plastics were introduced (mid to late 20th century).