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Time investment on hobbies


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Hi all,

wow, I've posted my last post about 2 years ago ... time runs fast.

Well, everything you need to know about my past you will find here: https://forum.gamequitters.com/topic/33-im-marcus/

There were two major changes in my (social) life in the past 12 months and I want to share them with you:

1)

In September 2016 I began playing Magic the Gathering - a trading card game you will might know about. When I was young I've played it a lot, together with friends at school. This happened almost 20 years ago and I wanted to give it a new try, since playing was always fun. So I joined a so called pre-release event with around 25 people (I did not know any of them, I just wanted to make connections) and met some really cool dudes. Since them I play irregularly on friday nights (the so called FNM - Friday Night Magic), also went to two bigger events with around 100+ people. Went to the first one alone (to the second with 2 dudes from my town) and it was a really uncomfortable feeling, only knowing a hand full of dudes from my local store from sight.

As to improve in MtG you need to play a lot. And by a lot I mean a lot. And my "local meta" is really competitive. People driving around the country attending tournaments and so on. So to be part of the (higher?) community, you better know how to play and know your foes decks inside and out. But I can't attend the FNMs regulary - and sometimes I just don't want to attend FNM, because its getting really late and I want to hang around at home relaxing. Beside FNM there might be events on saturdays I could attend. But again, not regulary. Would not say I'm bored, but I can't motivate myself to really attend to each (possible) event. There is still this little spark of fear when attending a tourney. Or excitement? I don't know.

2)

I really don't know what's the right term in english: We (my wife and I) joined a group of middle ages fans. So we dress up medieval, drinking a lot of beer and other stuff from cool drinking horns, listening to some medieval music and have fun. Fightning with weapons (blunt!) is also great. But we are not performing LARP :)

Made up some really really good (even female) friends there. In case of clothing there are endless ways to dress yourself up - it's a interesting and fun way to invest spare time. You can also read up a lot about the middle ages and become smarter.

 

My limiting factor is time. I'm a quite busy IT application manager and after being 5 years on the job, I decided to study again (trying my master's degree in IT security) - parallel to my current job. The study program is designed for full time jobber, but my daily schedule will change because of this.

Long story short: I would like to know how many hobbies do you have and would you prefer a broad selection of them or only a few, where you can invest to maximum possible time into them?

Kind regards

Marcus

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Hi @Marcus! I am in a similar position, trying to study my masters alongside my full time job and spending time with a family. I can tell you it is not easy at all!

I have cut my hobbies down a lot so I can focus on the "big three" - work, study, and family. I still have a lot of hobbies that I enjoy but I am a lot more careful with my time. The biggest hobby I have is building electronics which not only takes up a lot of time but a lot of money (similar to MTG), so I allocate half a day for that on the weekend (usually Saturday afternoon). Outside of that window I try to spend about 30 minutes to an hour a day on "me" time, doing something fun. Lately this is used to run, so I am having fun, pseudo-meditating, and getting fit at the same time.

A hobby like MTG is hard to fit in around your schedule because you need an opponent, which will involve travel time and a chunk of time each out of your day, which is hard to organise unless you are a regular at a local store. You're better off trying to get more out of your week days, such as studying and working as much as possible, so you can have a half or full day free on the weekend to dedicate to it, and also allow you to travel. You could alternate between MTG tournaments and attending your medieval festival.

Not sure if that helped much but I find maximising what you can do during the week for work and study means you can give yourself a full day on the weekend.

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