Hobbies are things we do in our free time. They are recreational and reflect our creativity and individuality.
Hobbies are also called Pastimes or Special Interest Activities and are basically divided into four types – doing things, making things, collecting things and learning things.
Let us take a look at some of the categories for Hobbies.
- Nature
- Sport and Adventure
- Creative
- Computers and Technology
- Outdoor hobbies
- Indoor hobbies
- Observing hobbies
- Collecting things
- Health hobbies
- Lifestyle Hobbies
Some people like to dress up in costumes like for Halloween but all year long. Many of our social activities such as singing, dancing, acting are Hobbies because we practice, exercise and indulge in them in our free time. Some people take them to extremes.
Let me tell you about my Dad. Well he’s a mad cyclist and goes out on his bicycle at weekends in a cycling group. A few weeks ago, he cycled in one day from Sentul to Pelabuhanratu, a distance of nearly 100 km and the cycling trip took eleven hours. Awesome I would say!
I have a friend on the Internet from England called Claire. Her unusual hobby is beekeeping. She has got four beehives and thinks she has got about 40,000 bees. Bees produce honey and Claire’s sense of innovation means she can sell the honey for money and buy even more bee-hives to have even more bees.
The most popular type of Hobby is doing things. The special interests are very varied, everything from playing chess, fishing on a river, gardening and travelling to flying a small plane. Many Hobbies are of a sporting nature.
Most of us have an instinct for collecting things. They may not be valuable things, just simple things like books, stamps, bottle tops, pictures, wall plates, but some of these things may become valuable and rare in time and be called an Antique. Collectables are called memorabilia.
One slightly unusual Hobby is researching your Family tree. This is commonly called Genealogy and involves many hours spent at a library and archive centre searching for information about your ancestors. The microfilming of old documents has made it easier but it is still time consuming and can become an obsession very easily. The more you research, the more you want to know.
Have you ever heard of Bungee Jumping or Daredevil Stunts? These are two examples certainly of extremely unusual Hobbies. Bungee is a place in New Zealand and people go there to jump off from the edge of a high cliff – attached to a rope of course. A Daredevil Stunt might be riding a motorcycle through a ring of fire or across a row of vehicles.
The fact remains that humans like a challenge and unusual hobbies provide that challenge.
Mr. Paul 