Everything that takes the mind off of all the stress of contemporary life.
Off-what? You mean in meatspace?
Jokes aside: Reading. Designing and playing Pen&Paper RPGs. Cooking.
Would you mind talking a bit more about your approach to cooking? I take some satisfaction from being able to cook and sometimes from the feeling of improving my skill as a cook, but mostly it feels like a necessary chore.
Sure! But it’s not particularly sophisticated. Other than staple recipes (like e.g. vegetables stews) I learned while growing up, when there’s a product I was previously dependent on buying ready-made that gets enshittified by the food industry so much I’m unwilling to pay the full asking price, I start looking into the recipe for it and experiment to calibrate quality, time efficiency, and material cost to the exact tradeoff I consider best for me. Frozen pizza vs self made pizza being one example.
My joy in cooking, aside from the above optimization process I find fun, comes from knowning I pay less money to eat a better quality (and almost always less unhealthy) meal than I’d otherwise be able to. Once I have a recipe dialed in, it also requires virtually no thinking to get done, which is the opposite of my daily work; that’s the “unwinding” for me. I can then also combine it with listening to some audiobook or TTRPG actual play / podcast.
Due to this depth-first approach my actual list of recipes isn’t incredibly large, but it’s enough to never get boring by now, at least.
Going for a walk is an essential activity for me to reset. Riding my bike has a similar effect. I’ve started leaving my phone at home.
Reading as well. Something light-hearted if I’m seeking joy.
I have a small garden on my balcony. It’s not successful right now but it’s enjoyable to watch something green grow.
What about playing FTL? :)
I’m with you on everything except gardening. It sounds appealing in the abstract, but then in the spring it turns into “ugh, too much to do” and “ugh, gotta get up early to water” in the summer.
Actually…what DID get you into gardening in the first place? Maybe there’s something to it that I’m missing.
Ayy you got the reference!
I started because I wanted to grow Thai holy basil which I was struggling to find in stores, extended to different varieties of kind of pricey hot peppers, then a few flowers to keep it looking nice. I’ve had a few bad seasons over the years that made me almost quit but at this point it would feel weird to not have a garden to take care of.
The maintenance can occasionally be a pain but it’s sometimes nice to have a good reason to get up early. It only becomes too much work if I get greedy and take on too many plants at once. I try to keep it to a small and manageable amount, and choose plants that don’t require a lot of care.
Outdoor back-to-basics stuff has only proven more beneficial the more I have integrated it into my life.
Carpentry, landscaping, gardening, and taking care of my many animals all help me get fresh air and exercise in addition to whatever else I get out of the activities.
I am living the superposition of that meme where the resume or linkedin profile goes from Senior Systems Architect to Goose Farmer. My day job is software for embedded systems. At home, in addition to the indoor projects I am slowly transforming my little fenced-in back yard into a combination of oasis, hobby farm, and town from an old RPG or zelda game.
i go stand in a forest for an hour every week. i don’t walk, run, or do anything interesting. i just stand there, watch and listen
The tree in the forest trying not to laugh and give away its sentience while you stare at it like this
I hike on trails near my house, but I make sure to look around and take in the small things. Even if I’ve been on the trail a thousand times, there’s always something new to see.
Interesting practice of mindfulness! How did this routine of yours come to be?
I was going for forest walks at the time to help deal with my depression and for some reason just tried to be as quiet as possible one day. It was the best and I realized I didn’t actually like the fitness part of the walk. Being as slow and quiet as possible felt much better
This is how you get the best animal sightings
yeah I see birds closer than I’ve ever seen them before
If you’re interested in ramping that up a bit:
- edge habitats: try to pock spots where ecosystems meet, like forest meets field
- wind alignment: stay
upwinddownwind (how did I do that) if possible - stillness (what you’re doing): 10-15mins of stillness between slow movement
- pinch points: check the map and try to find spots like where a ridge narrows that funnel animals
- tracking: look out for tracks, poop, etc
Investing in a little popup blind or camo netting or something to hide in can be magic
dude thank you this is very cool! I’ve noticed the forest meeting the field being interesting but hadn’t thought past that
Music. I have a degree in Music History, but I haven’t made a living with it for 25 years, although I still loved music.
During COVID, I was bored, and eating, so I took up guitar again, after leaving it behind decades ago. I’ve played every day since, and not only reached an intermediate level (far better than I ever was in the past), but I’ve also lost 100 pounds, by picking up my guitar instead of going to the fridge.
Now I’m experimenting with recording, using cheap used gear, and having a blast.
Gardening, walking in forests :)
Litter picking is also a very in-the-moment activity, like an IRL hidden object game.
I’d also say that I read a lot, but I do it on an ebook reader, so it doesn’t feel properly offline 😅
Litter picking is a great suggestion.
Thanks :) I really like that it has an immediate positive effect. I typically work on digital documents and long projects, so it’s at most a couple times a year that my work has a tangible end result that I can leaf through. Litter picking gives immediate satisfaction :)
It reminds me of a scene in Iain Banks’s sci-fi novel Use of Weapons:
hidden for length
Later, he had wandered off. The huge ship was an enchanted ocean in which you could never drown, and he threw himself into it to try to understand if not it, then the people who had built it.
He walked for days, stopping at bars and restaurants whenever he felt thirsty, hungry or tired; mostly they were automatic and he was served by little floating trays, though a few were staffed by real people. They seemed less like servants and more like customers who’d taken a notion to help out for a while.
‘Of course I don’t have to do this,’ one middle-aged man said, carefully cleaning the table with a damp cloth. He put the cloth in a little pouch, sat down beside him. ‘But look; this table’s clean.’
He agreed that the table was clean.
‘Usually,’ the man said. ‘I work on alien - no offence - alien religions; Directional Emphasis In Religious Observance; that’s my speciality… like when temples or graves or prayers always have to face in a certain direction; that sort of thing? Well, I catalogue, evaluate, compare; I come up with theories and argue with colleagues, here and elsewhere. But… the job’s never finished; always new examples, and even the old ones get re-evaluated, and new people come along with new ideas about what you thought was settled… but,’ he slapped the table, ‘when you clean a table you clean a table. You feel you’ve done something. It’s an achievement.’
Litter picking seems like a blast. Dry litter is just fun to clean up.
Haha I live in Glasgow, so it’s often not fully dry, and I have to turn bottles and cans upside down to let the rainwater pour out before bagging them.
I love forests, especially when the terrain is rugged enough to straddle the line between hiking and freeclimbing.
For books, I like the feel of turning the pages by hand, but I won’t begrudge anyone their e-reader!
Yeah, I enjoy feeling/smelling paper books, but ebooks win me over by their overwhelming convenience 😅
Sex
This guy fucks
Good one, fellow adult. I too have had the sex. Many. 150%
Reading and hiking are the two main ones for me.
What are you reading?
On holiday this week, so I have a new read: Father Goriot. I have hardly started so far.
Great read! Not fun, but you went for Balzac so I assume you know what you are getting yourself into. Enjoy!
Picked up “The Flowers of Buffonery” and “The Cheese and the Worms” recently myself
Photo walks. Your whole point just becomes to go out and take in the scenery. Makes you slow down and appreciate your surroundings in a way that a walk doesn’t. If you’re after wildlife you have to move with intention, lest you scare the subject. If it’s a more static subject you’ve more time to take in the light and shadows, frame your background.
Also a very good practice in Mindfulness! Lovely Idea.
Ooh, thats a lovely idea
I’ve gotten into camping solo with my motorbike at an absurd pace this year and it’s basically become my main way to disconnect, reset and chill. I think 3 months ago was my first trip and time camping? With a popup tent that sets up in 1 second, chair and self inflating mattress, sleeping bag and pillow, stored in a big bag on the passenger seat of my bike. Since then I’ve gone camping whenever the weather permits. Last week I did a 5 day tour, travelling from campsite to campsite. I have 4 tents now, 3 different chairs, 3 types of tables, a cot, 3 inflatable mattresses, the self inflating mattress, a foldable fire pit, ground sheets for every tent, fire sheet, food prep utensils, 3 power banks, a portable fan (MVP in Japan’s humid weather), 2 sleeping bags (one for winter), a tarp, 2 side bags to haul more stuff on my bike and a firewood stove. I don’t really regret any purchase because I can make use of everything by mixing and matching depending on my mood and wants since everything I take multiple off usually has trade-off between convenience or space e.g. if I feel lazy I put the popup tent on my back (it folds into a neat circle and has back straps), meaning all my space can go to an instant setup chair, large table and self-inflsting mattress.
My 4 tents:
- 1 second setup pop-up tent
- Smol 1 person tent with fly sheet
- 3 meter tall teepee style tent (hey, I wanted to be able to stand) that almost maxes out my bag space on its own.
- A really versatile but semi large 1 person tent for the winter with an inner tent, a chimney chute for the stove and lots of options for how to use it, don’t really need an extra tarp with it.
- Honorable mention: a hammock tent that I haven’t had the chance to use yet.
Haven’t even used the stove and the tent with the chimney chute yet, literally just got them in anticipation of winter camping and vibrating with excitement at just the thought of finally using it. Same with the tarp, I didn’t realize that’s what those roof structures I saw others use were called (I’m ESL I thought tarp was just used for something you sit on) and I’m excited to use it next time to shield from rain.
It’s so relaxing. Nothing feels better to me than sitting on my chair, chucking Soju while the fire rages on for hours, then cooking on the coals (just sausages and potatoes wrapped in foil), eating, drinking more, burning more light firewood trying to get the biggest flames on the site that my fire pit allows for, then once I’ve burned through it all, retreating into the tent, turning on the fan and sleeping like a brick. Oh and during setup and pack down being able to listen to an audiobook.
God just writing this makes me giddy. I prepped my setup for my next trip, just need a break from autumn rain and catch a sunny site not too far away one of these weekends.
This is awesome! I’m in Japan too, how do you find good campsites?
https://www.nap-camp.com/ is what I end up using the most.
Truth be told I’m usually not the one finding the sites tho. I have an agent set up to monitor the weather, then look for campsites that allow my bike, then signals me if a good match happens in a certain radius around where I live. I know it looks at more sources, but nap-camp seems to come up the most. It made a skill for weather and site search in case I have requests outside of the usual monitor. So I can check a weather radar myself and go “find me some candidates for camping tomorrow near X”.I haven’t gone enough to have a no-no list when it comes to campsites itself, enjoying the variety of them all so far. As much as I hate insects, I notice how vastly different insect life is on different sites, the constant cries of them at night now helps me sleep lol.
If you don’t care about reserving things or dealing with other websites, honestly zoom into any place on google maps and I notice now theres tons of campsites, or just going to a part of the map and putting in キャンプ場 should highlight tons of options.
Thanks, this site seems very useful!
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Shitposting on Lemmy
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Looking at porn
Oh… Wait that says offline activities…
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Thinking of shitposts to post on Lemmy
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Jerking off
(☞ﾟ∀ﾟ)☞
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Adult band program at a School of Rock franchise.
Weekly 90 minute rehearsal, and we put on a show every 3-4 months. Our big show is today, I’m playing keys on seven songs this time around.
Also, separately from that, I play bass in a cover band that I met through the School of Rock program.
Music’s some good shit.
Rock for us all!
I discovered School of Rock in Denver, and they do shows at Red Rocks too. I think its such an awesome idea. I attended one free lesson last year and haven’t gone back yet, but I have been trying to dedicate some time to guitar recently. I find it so difficult to maintain the motivation to practice as an adult. any tips?
My motivation is all around deepening my enjoyment of music I already know and love. Listening to a great song is awesome but playing part of it on an instrument is so much deeper of a way to engage with and enjoy it
Cooking. Gardening.
literally everything else I do is online :)
Painting. You can get a decent brush set, as many colors of acrylic paint as you need to make just about any color you’d want, and a few canvases for around $40.
Running. Just one foot in front of the other. Bonus points for running in a new place and taking in the sights.
What does your mind do when you’re running? Can you just clear all thoughts and focus on breathing and one foot after the other.
Or does the repetition make you spiral on every bad decision from the last 20 years like me 😅
I am like you, running is good exercise but too boring and I can’t stop thinking. Aerobic dance like Jazzercise is perfectly calibrated so that I can just follow/do and not think but the class near me ended, they are only out in the suburbs now. Yoga is good if it’s the challenging vinyasa flow with music, I can sometimes get into that perfect mindset. But fucking Jazzercise was oddly perfect and is gone.
Start a group!
My mind is writing books or short stories that will never be set on a paper, inventing new things that I have no idea how they’d work, but most importantly, my mind is busy arguing with others, and winning every argument :)
