To wonder what on earth all these myserious hobbies on MN are?

[Abbinob]

I see so many posts with things like "when i'm doing my hobby" "DH spends 2 hours a week doing his hobby" "a friend from my hobby"

WHAT ARE ALL THESE HOBBIES?

I've never heard anyone say this in RL
"so what you doing tonight?"
"oh you know, i'm going to do my hobby"

It makes me all nosey and agitated trying to work out what these hobbies are

mrsunderwood whenever I watch golf on tv and someone gets a ball in the hole, I always think 'this would be so much more interesting if there was a windmill in the way, or he had to knock it through the legs of a twelve foot tall flamingo'.

One of my hobbies is so far up the 'woo' category that I wouldn't name it, or even hint at the wooness for fear of the anti-woo brigade coming down on me. I'm even attempting to start a small business with it I have 'hobbies' and am 'starting a business from home'...

I quilt, knit, crochet and cross stitch. I have one of each type as WIP (works in progress). I have just taken up dressmaking too.

I also creatively write, at least twice a week, often much more, and I'm a ML for NaNoWriMo (for those who know what that is). A couple of days ago I signed up for the first module of a MA in creative writing - Thank you OU for setting that course up.

I play 2 online games. I might be becoming the leader of the guild/alliance/group thing on one of them.

There's other stuff too, but they are the main ones that fill my evenings.

DH plays one of the online games, and he also cycles. I keep telling him he needs more hobbies.

Right back to.... knitting tonight I think.

My hobby involves industrial quantities of shit, back breaking labour, getting soaked in winter and getting odd tan lines in summer. On a good day, I might be over-taken at speed and close proximity by an angry car driver. On a bad day, I might be projected into the floor at speed and break something, hopefully not my neck. Most all days, my hobby involves a significant investment of both time and money.

In hindsight, I'm not sure "hobby" is the right word...

I think the "going out cycling to meet the other woman" idea is hardwired into the subconscious of anybody subjected to British comedy in the 1980s:

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(Dinghy sailing and the allotment, should you be interested).

I need to add singing in choirs

Elfycat which games? if you don't mind spilling the beans. First game I played was approx 40 years ago and apart form a few years when DC were very tiddly it's been my most consistent hobby. I moved from PC to PlayStation to Xbox. Good luck with guild leader, I have witnessed too many nerd rages when people disapprove of people's actions in game to take a leadership role

Not the huge MMORPG Piemernator. Settlers Online, Mobile Strike (that's the leadership one and I'm already getting the rage from a lower might player who wants to take over. The strop he's throwing is amazingly adolescent. I've bowed to pressure to take over as people are mailing me saying 'not him!') and SimCity.

Building games are my thing. Loved Age of Empires and farmville in it's day Might also get back to building in my Smurf's Village sometime

i must work in the same hospital office as ClodiaAtia

whenever someone's talking about their male DP I always assume it's cycling. There's a particular professional group at work dominated by men aged 35-55, and to a man their respective mid-life crises have involved donning lycra and spending more money than their wives know about on bikes.

I got slated on a thread once for daring to suggest that 'gaming' wasn't a legitimate adult hobby.

To me, a 'hobby' is something that you have an unusual level of interest/enjoyment/knowledge/skills in outside of your actual job, and which you dedicate a regular portion of your free time to. I think there has to be a long-term element to it as well. I think some hobbies can border on obsessions, TBH.

Anything else is a passtime. I go to the gym 5+ times a week, but it's a passtime for me more than a hobby. If I liked to run marathons and went to the gym as part of the training for that, then it would be a hobby.

always assume it's cycling. There's a particular professional group at work dominated by men aged 35-55, and to a man their respective mid-life crises have involved donning lycra and spending more money than their wives know about on bikes.

Surely the most benign of the traditional midlife crisis options (affair with younger woman, Harley Davidson/Mazda Mx5, tattoo, dressing like a twenty year old)

Dh's hobbies are birdwatching, photography and cricket, my boys hobbies are cricket and gym, my hobby is enabling them to do as much as they want if those things so I get to enjoy my real hobby of peace and quiet with my feet up

Thank you so much for asking this question OP. It bugs the hell out of me too - I spend more time trying to identify the hobby than reading the actual point of the thread

I always suspect windsurfing fwiw.

Isn't it because some can be identifying and people are paranoid?

DH's hobby is following a (shit) football team up and down the country. If I mentioned specifically about away games/play offs etc then I'm sure some other shitty football team fan would know that little bit more about me. Yep - I'm paranoid too!

My hobby is pretending I'm Beyoncé and hooking up my skinny jeans. Sometimes simultaneously.

DiseasesoftheSheep are you either (a) a shepherd, or (b) a trubuchet tester on Hadrian's Wall?

Widget boiling.

What do you mean, you've never heard if it?

echt in a job interview when asked did I have hobby. I said I had the gift of repose.

Total genius. Wish I'd thought of it

I think idontlikealdi is right. All those hobbiers are MAMILs. I work with one. Ignoring his little beer belly he looks like he's doing the Tour de France. He cycles 3 miles to work. He spends all weekend and most of his disposable income on Mamiling.

Sometimes it's not gone into detail about, because people then get wrapped up in what the activity actually is, rather than the actual question - say 'Is it fair I do all the cooking?' or whatever. Well known that if you put your dh dares to be interested in football, then there's a whole heap of people on here that will instantly say that he should give it up, because they don't like football, rather than because they actually genuinely think he shouldn't have a hobby. Whereas if his hobby were running a children's orchestra, that would somehow be OK. That's not usually what the poster is asking {Do you approve of my dh's hobby?}, they are usually asking if X amount of time out the house is reasonable.

No, no Diseases has a horse. At least one, maybe more. I recognise the description only too well.

Intrigued by the expensive and strange hobby.

I was asked recently at a meeting what my hobbies were and I just could not get around the idea that a woman who works and has kids, a DH who works late and has elderly parents could a) have disposable time to have a hobby and b) disposable income to indulge herself.

Maybe I'm totally wrong, but to me a hobby is something you do when you really don't give a hoot about who is picking up the slack back on the ranch.

Hobbies are in my mind predominantly done by men who have wives!

Activities are done by women when they can actually have a breather, this includes having a glass of wine, MN and knitting, and

sports are done by anyone who can still move their body without needing a day or two to loll about, without having to attend to all the things that need doing in recovery time.

I don't feel like I'm a martyr but I haven't had a hobby since I had kids. I craft, love puzzles and read, but a hobby, where I can go out to a class or something every week just for the hell of it? No, I've no spare time, and I have others calls on my money too.

I don't count walking the dog or feeding the goldfish as a hobby, more a picking up the slack, and acting humanely. Neither do I count professional training and courses as a hobby, more of an investment.

As I said the question "what are your hobbies?" really floored me- I felt it showed a remarkable lack of understanding of what women's lives are really like. Or maybe I'm just not selfish enough or have enough sleep to even think of myself as having a hobby.

Maybe when the kids are older, and the elderly parents have other people looking after them too, maybe then I'll get back to the things I enjoyed off site at a regular time, before everyone wanted a piece of me.

In the meantime, my knee jerk reaction to the word hobby is a bad one!
I think of a hobbyist as someone who behaves like a single man: someone who indulges himself and shirks his responsibilities!

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Humm.... Maybe I do have a hobby after all?

Totally I fit your criteria and while I don't have a hobby right now I did the last few years.

DH used to come home one night per week by 7.15 so I could do my hobby that evening, which started at 7.30.

But I don't have a dog, do any exercise /gym to speak of, or look after my parents.

But why is mentioning what the hobby is going to out anyone? Unless you are literally the only person in the country to do it. You know, if you're Kim and you're posting "AIBU to be miffed that my husband spent all weekend in Rome defeating Djokovic in the Italian Open instead of at home with me and our baby daughter?" Then you might have a fair point that you could be outed. But otherwise?

My dh doesn't have a hobby-he birds.
Fellow partners of birders will know what I mean.

BackForGood has a good point.

I bet that if I started a thread complaining about DH's unavailability at the weekend, and then mentioned that he's unavailable because he spends all his free time building and running model railways* with like minded friends, there'd be a whole raft of replies mocking the notion of anyone over the age of 10 playing with model railways. I've seen that before when an OP mentions a DP having a hobby some people consider unsuitable.

(* Disclaimer - model railways is not DH's hobby)