20+ Hobbies: Slightly Dangerous and Weird

This is not your normal list of hobbies. But, in this day and age, retirement hobbies should be changing anyway. Take a look and let me know what you think.

All of us that write about retirement will talked about hobbies sooner or later. The idea is that when you retire you will have time on your hands. I think a lot of people believe that a life without work will be blissful. Then after a while they realize that they need to fill the days with something meaningful. I know many just think that they will go back to work.  But here is an idea...try out a hobby first.  Who knows you may just find not working is more fun than you thought.

I have seen very long lists of hobbies over the years. The items always make me laugh. Things like dumpster diving and ambulance chasing catch my interest.  I knew a man once that traveled up and down back roads collecting what he thought was valuable stuff. It sounded a lot like working on litter patrol to me. There are people that listen to police transmissions or assemble epic jigsaw puzzles.

But for this blog post I am looking for a few things that are weird or exciting...even a little sketchy. Here are a few new ones I have not seen before.

Urban exploration caught my interest.  Below you will see a video taken in the subway tunnels in NYC...going underground guerrilla style could be interesting. I think you are going to like this one even if you aren't interested in trying it out. YouTube has a list of video about this hobby here.



The same author suggested....

Guerrilla gardening:  Think gardening can’t be an extreme sport? It can’t get your heart pumping? You’re probably right – but guerrilla gardening is still pretty cool. 

Garden planted in shopping bags then left by a lamp post

See guerrilla gardening in public spaces takes some courage because it is not expected or necessarily legal. But doing it without permission embraces the idea that you can make a difference. Getting caught could get the adrenalin flowing. I have a friend that says it is better to ask forgiveness than permission. You might find out if this is true.

Food Cart Pop-Up Business in Portland

Here are few others that caught my interest:

• Sex
• Live in a van...park on street corners at night
• Watch the neighbors
• Report the neighbors to the police
• Build a pop-up park (in a parking lot or vacant lot)
• Learn to cut your own hair
• Start an insect eradication business using chickens
• Keep goats and rent them out to eat black berries vines



Pop-up Park built in the parking strip by the road!





• Donate blood
• Reverse shop...take items to stores and hang them on the racks
• Give up a vice
• Become a beater for bird hunters
• Build a bunker in case of nuclear war
• Explore asceticism...do without food or soap
• Sleep
• Geo cache (this one could be a lot of fun)
• Become a whiskey/gin/tequila/beer connoisseur 
• Make lists

And to think you believed that retirement was going to be boring! 

b+

Disclaimer: I am not suggesting that you do any of these that are illegal. This was written with tongue in cheek...sorta!

Sources:

• The Art of Manliness
• Free In Ten Years
• me

Find my fiction over at It Crossed My Mind Blog

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Bragging Rights: Success in Retirement

What happens when you remove career from this puzzle?

What do you see as being successful in a life without a job? When the perks and rewards that come with a career go away how will you find satisfaction without someone telling you how good you are? You may not realize it but I would bet that you will need to find a way to satisfy that part of your nature. So how will you do that?

Find a Hobby that You Love
I am a blogger and part of my measure of achievement comes with what happens when I write. You may be a golfer or a volunteer or even an avid lover of books. Whatever you do, I imagine that it validates you in some way. And validation is what we all need.

Live on Your Past Laurels
My family likes to joke that every adventure is all about the bragging rights. It is very true that humans do like to feel good about something that sets them above the crowd...it is natural to feel good about success. In some ways talking about success is the minds way of getting that feeling achievement brings one more time. It is very like showing those vacation photos to an unwary friend...the viewer may not be excited but the person that took the photos gets to relive that vacation joy one more time. Bragging may work the same way.

Even though bragging may make the bragger feel good, being the person listening is not so much fun.  In fact, it could be that the person that is bragging is simply topping what you just talked about. This is where the old job that brought the worker a millions air miles gets to be a unimportant. Really no one cares anymore. If they want to have friendships, retiree have to move on and find a new way of validating their existence.

Find Intrinsic or Extrinsic Rewards
It is hard to give up the idea that going to work does not pay for your bread and butter. Getting paid every month without a job seemed very strange when my husband I headed down this path. We would never again get a raise because we worked hard or be given a plaque for a job well done. While it is all good, we both missed those types of positive strokes...at least to begin with. Then we settled into a life that required us to find satisfaction from within. We became self-starters and worked or played for the shear joy of being tired or getting better at our hobbies. We learned to have fun and worry less...why was that so hard?

I have begun to think that retirement happiness requires a great deal of imagination. Maybe that is why it is hard to feel successful in spite of what may look like a perfect life. Everyone needs to find something that brings a reward in their life but payoffs in the third part of our life may need to come from an inner drive and not a pay check.  For us the trick was to set goals and then invent our own rewards and plaques. It was a process that required us to learn to pat ourselves on the back. Other people take up a hobby or avocation with the hope that they will gain recognition or monetary gain. Their success comes from feeling wanted and needed. They need extrinsic rewards to be able to see themselves as successful.

Conclusion
As for those bragging rights it all depends on how you use them. Do you voice them out loud or do you keep them close to your vest? It is each individual's choice. I am working to come to a place where it is a enough to know in my heart and be satisfied. Hopefully, I can keep myself under control and not become tiresome or a braggart.  Hopefully!

What do you see as being successful in this stage of your life?

Note: Comments are encouraged and very welcome. Be sure to leave a url for you blog site in the comment box with your comment.  I would like to read what you are writing and so would other people.  Let's make it as easy as we can for them.

Have a wonderful day.

b+

Hobbies...amazing things to do during retirement!

Photography...Odgen Canyon, UT

Fall Crush Wine Tasting Event, Carlton, Oregon...a very cool hobby!

I cannot tell you how liberating it is to do something just because you love doing it.  My hobby is blogging.  I don't need anymore money really.  If I do make a little money when you click on an ad from Adsense, it is just icing on the cake.  That is what retirement allows you to do.  It gives you the freedom to spend the day learning to do something new and you don't have to quit your day job to do it.

Golf...my husband's favorite!

Take my husband for example.  He loved his job for 32 years but never missed it for even one day when he retired.  He has taken up golf as his retirement "job" and he pays attention to it as though he could make a living at it.  His mind and his health are dependent upon him "working" at getting better.  That is what I am talking about.

So what will you do when you retire? Let me tell you the day can get scary boring and the winter nights are very, very long.  If you sit down to rest for all the day you have actually chosen to make "resting" your hobby.  If that was your A choice go to B in a hurry.

I have tried to define for my own satisfaction the meaning of the word hobby...I had always thought it was something we did for fun or recreation but retirement has made me take a hard look at that definition.  It just seemed that it should be more  serious or something.  Then I realized... I am having too much fun...I cannot think of this as a job!  I have decided that a hobby is just that...a hobby and should remain a pleasure day after day...even if I don't have a day job to escape from. 

Hoover Dam Bypass Bridge...travel, my favorite hobby!

So I went on a search for things that I might like just in case I get tired of writing and I was amazed at how long the list of hobbies was...and even more amazed at how many of things on the list I would like to try. There is a website called NotSoBoringLife.com that has posted the Worlds Largest List of Hobbies and that is where I found some dream hobbies for myself.  For example:

• paper making
• rocking aids babies
• wine making
• yoga
• geochaching
• postcrossing

Geocaching and Postcrossing are hobbies that a blogger named Erika Jean loves.  Both of these appeal to me...the first is about finding treasure with a Global Positioning System and the other is about getting postcards in the mail from far far away.   If you love to hike and own a GPS the first one is for you.  If you don't mind buying a few stamps and putting in a little effort you will love the second.  I want to give both of these a try one day.

The World Largest List of Hobbies  honors those everyday or quirky things that people may do...visiting with  neighbors, playing poker, yoyoing, throwing boomerangs, watching movies, reading, cloud watching and even dumpster diving.  I laughed as I went through the list.  However, if it floats your boat and makes you happy, who am I to say no to it.  It is your hobby.  Have some fun.

My husband and I have several things we do together...golf, travel, photography, wine tasting, crossword puzzles...just to name a few.  You are reading my favorite personal hobby...blogging is something I do that keeps my brain alive.  The paths I travel down to find the information I want are fascinating.  I am also a multimedia artist but for now I am giving it up.  If I don't love it I  find something else that is equally as satisfying.  Who knows, I may be a dumpster diving boomerang thrower at heart and just don't know it yet!

Have a wonderful day!

b
Hub:  When Retirement is a good thing!

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