when I was in third grade the other kids made me shut up about Lord of the Rings, but I was right actually, that shit rips

Slowly rediscovering my fascination for radio communications. Meshtastic and Meshcore are running, dusted off an old analog scanner that I kept from my cb radio days in '97, and a RTL-SDR is on it's way. Good times :)

My younger self loved computers and programming and any love I had for that died after 5 years on the job.

I'm 15 years on the job now. 😭

I am collecting Lego City again. One day I’ll have a full city again.

Throwing crabapples in the road to watch cars run over them? I'm not sure it's a good idea

So many of the usual, like many people I'm sure: drawing, writing, making bad websites, playing video games...

But also just laying on the ground and listening to the birds chirping. Staring at nothing and just letting my mind wander, for no purpose at all.

So... back to stamp collecting?

With more money, and more new accessible tech and access to information, it's great!

Drawing, I was actually good at it.

My younger self was a fool. STEM, power and dominance should have been my only interests.

I was so happy to rediscover that playing in the woods and outdoorsing was super rad and exactly what I needed.

I doodled often as a kid. From little characters drawn on my notes or the corners of class work (after I'd finished completing them), to silly comic strips I'd make at home, to art class where I had a knack for still lifes, it was a casual interest that I really enjoyed.

By high school, though, I had friends who were incredible at manga-style drawing. I could never make drawings in that style, so I thought I couldn't compete. I'd also been bullied a lot in childhood and was terrified to draw for school projects if I knew they'd be displayed around the class room, so I didn't even try. I didn't consider myself an artist at all, and had managed to internalize the idea that I couldn't draw.

Then I became an adult and realized there's nothing wrong with being unable to draw in a particular style, even if it's popular. I began embracing my own style. I also began branching into painting, and before long I redid my childhood bedroom to create a different season on each wall, complete with a light blue ceiling full of realistic-looking clouds.

I've since become known for making art at the places I worked. At a craft store I taught classes and a coworker made a fake nametag for me as the "Official Doodler" of the store. Then my brother had kids and by the age of 2, one of his boys was enthralled by me drawing on a magna-doodle. He would ask me to draw particular things over and over again, watching every stroke I did, then copying me until he developed an amazing artistic skill in his own right. Today his classmates ask him, "How did you draw that?" and it annoys him, because it's become so easy as to be intuitive and he doesn't understand how they don't get it.

My parents recently sold my childhood home. My old bedroom was a selling point - the new owners fell in love with it, and have already decorated the room to go along with the "seasons" theme. They'll be turning it into a nursery. :)

So yes, 100%, go back to your childhood interests! You never know what skills might be lying dormant because you haven't practiced them in a while. It doesn't matter if it's good or not at first, because if you've got a passion and you practice enough, you might surprise yourself with what you can accomplish.

Board games and little plastic army men.

I am still doing the same things as I did as a child. Maybe less outdoor stuff but I blame that on lack of friends :(

As someone no longer in their 20s or 30s this is some of the best advice I've ever heard

100%. Painting miniatures half an hour a day keeps my head quiet.

Had a second take until I saw the community name, was waiting for the downturn

You ain't lying. I recently started to look at trees the way I used to. Like I got so many good climbing trees by my job. I might mess around and get caught hanging out in them one of these days.

Yes, I'm now buying rare vinyls and CDs! I'm waiting for a vinyl that just passed costumes, who knows how much I'm going to pay, fuck.

Shit! Collecting magic the gathering and buying warhammer and painting maybe one out of fifty and then not playing either seems like it would be right up my alley again. I'm not sure i can afford it though..

On the other note, I am about to buy a 3d printer. Making a few miniatures at a time and painting them with my kids sounds awesome!

Yes when my kids got to the age of playing at parks, I rediscovered swings & monkey bars & gymnastics & acrobatics & what a therapeutic rediscovery it has been.

You mean sleeping? That never stopped being interesting to me.

And 40s

I never really stopped touching myself. Best hobby ever.

Probably less that young me knew something and more that current me has money for those hobbies

When I was a kid, I loved Ben 10 and I had a toy drum kit that I didn't know how to play.

Now I'm doing a complete watch-through of Ben 10 and I can play the theme on My drums.

Video games, drawing/art, photography, having cats as pets, and wearing almost exclusively unisex clothing.

Yep. 12 year old me would have been quite happy to see me now.

I rediscovered being creative in my 30s. I started doing improv and stand up. Cracking jokes with your friends is always fun.

I tried to learn how to make video games when I was 12. I recently restarted learning how to do that in my 30s.

I started reading again. I have better taste in books now than I did when I was a kid, but some of the books I read as a kid were bangers.

I started playing basketball again. I used to play basketball everyday from age 12 to age 25. It hurts a lot more but it is so good for my soul.

I was really interested in ttrpgs and wargmaming as a kid. My family was poor as hell, though, so buying $40+ books and $300+ Warhammer starter sets wasn't a priority. I would try to create my own but were all proper shit. I at least had fun with process.

I discovered some used Call of Cthulhu books in an antique mall in my mid 20s and realized that I could buy all the stuff I never could get as a kid. I'm 42 now and have two full bookcases of RPGs and a whole pile of grey plastic collecting dust.

Revisiting my old hobbies and - by turns - finding out some of this stuff was dumb shit for babies and some of this stuff was absolutely fucking impossible how did I ever get it to work at all when I was twelve?!

I wish I remember what young me used to do. What he used to wish he had the money to do. All that sort of stuff.

Because now pretty much all I do is work, scroll Reddit, and watch Youtube.

RC cars are really cool now. Also, slot cars on non-ferrous tracks.

DINOZAURS!

Time to eat dirt again then

You better believe if I had the money that I would absolutely buy a bunch of marbles and this thing that was a bunch of plastic pieces you'd connect together just so you could send your marbles down the track.

Still have yet to drop the cartoon/animation watching hobby, so kid me would absolutely be proud. Though I'm sure kid me would absolutely be confused about the whole dressing up as cartoon animal ( wearing a fursuit head ) thing, but at least my teen self ( 15 up ) would die of jealousy over it.

This is me with foam dart blasters right now. Not buying nerf because Hasbro sucks, but the market has expanded greatly to other better brands since I was a kid and access to 3D printing has blown retail stuff out of the water.