What’s a hobby you suggest everyone should take up to improve their mental health?

return2ozma@lemmy.world to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 95 points –
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There's not gonna be a proper answer that applies to everyone. For myself, riding BMX flatland, riding unicycles, carving wood, learning survival skills, keeping time..

… keeping time?

Check my username. I've been partly obsessed with keeping accurate track of time since I learned to read an analog clock at age 9.

By age 12, I started learning the exact times of the school bells. By age 15, I learned how to rebuild digital watches, and even replace the quartz crystal with a more accurate one.

By age 17 I was rebuilding mechanical self-winding wristwatches, and also learning to overclock computers.

Edit: For extra clarity, I also now know how to tune the firing order on an ICE engine, no matter how many cylinders. I also know how to time a VCR and tune a guitar.

I'm 42 years old now.

Sounds like you should pursue a career at NIST so your hobby can align with a profession. They're all about keeping track of time to extreme precision with atomic and optical clocks.

I saved your comment to respond later once I got my words together.

I really appreciate your comment, seriously. But I never thought of it as a hobby, I thought of it as an obligation, to understand time, as best as possible anyways.

At age 9, I had just recently gotten my first glasses. I was left home alone for like a half hour, and I just stared at their analog clock. After 5 minutes, counting the ticks and watching the dials, I just understood it. Never even had to ask an adult.

I always thought of it as an obligation of education that I somehow missed before I got glasses.

I never once thought of it as a hobby before you described it that way.

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Also, a 1 meter pendulum swings at a rate of once per second. Handy info to know if all the clocks shut down, like in a survivalist situation or natural disaster.

Ah yes, because in an Apocalypse I'm gonna have a 1 meter pendulum handy.

It probably only costs like $10 to get a measured line professionally tattooed on your leg/thigh for reference.

Anything one meter long swinging on a pivot is a 1 meter pendulum no?

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