Hobby
A hobby is a spare-time pursuit (see recreation), practiced for interest and enjoyment, rather than as paid work. Examples include collecting, making, tinkering, sports and adult education. Engaging in a hobby can lead to acquiring substantial skill, knowledge, and experience. But personal fulfillment is the aim.
What are hobbies for some people are professions for others: a computer game tester may enjoy cooking as a hobby, while a professional chef might enjoy playing (and helping to debug) computer games. Generally speaking, the person who does something for fun, not remuneration, is called an amateur (or hobbyist), as distinct from professional.
An important determinant of what is considered a hobby, as distinct from a profession, is probably how easy it is to make a living at the activity. Almost no one can make a living at stamp collecting, but many people find it enjoyable; so it is commonly regarded as a hobby.
While some hobbies strike most people as trivial and boring, the hobbyist has found something compelling and entertaining about them. Much early scientific research was, in effect, a hobby of the wealthy; in our own time, Linux began as a student's hobby.
Pursuit of a hobby often has calming or helpful therapeutic side effects.
Hobbies include:
- Amateur Astronomy
- Amateur Radio
- Animals
- Dog Breeding?
- Keeping pet animals
- Arts and Crafts
- Drawing
- Sculpture
- Painting
- Automotive
- [Antique]
- [Trucks]
- [Motorcycles]
- Collecting
- Antique Collecting
- Art Collecting
- Automobile license plate collecting, only possible in places where the plates are not government property.
- Birds' egg collecting - Oology
- Book collecting - Bibliophily
- Bottle collecting
- Card collecting
- Character collecting, such as anything Elvis, or everything Mickey Mouse
- Coin collecting (Numismatics)
- Comic book collecting
- Currency collecting (Notaphily)
- Doll collecting
- Home-computers collecting
- Keyring collecting
- Miniature collecting
- Numismatics - includes coins, medals and tokens
- Patch/badge collecting - Scutelliphily
- Phone-card collecting
- Postcard collecting
- Seashell collecting (Conchology)
- Souvenir spoon collecting
- Stamp collecting (Philately)
- Thimble collecting
- Weapon collecting
- this list needs to be continued!
- Literature
- Reading
- Writing
- Learning Foreign Languages
Please add to this list!!
What are our priorities for writing in this area? To help develop a list of the most basic topics about hobbies, please see hobby basic topics.