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Notes -
It is the day after Thanksgiving; and so I will oblige my Christmas-obsessed wife by bringing up the Christmas decorations from the basement. As I walk through the basement, I see the detritus of many things I tried and abandoned. Mottizens: what hobbies or activities have you given a good honest try, and concluded: "this isn't for me?"
For me we have, for example:
Golf: Tennis is the only sport to which I have ever devoted myself. However, a few years ago, I spent a large chunk of time thinking about golf, taking lessons, hitting balls at the driving range etc. Then I picked up a very aggravating hip injury that healed slowly. By the time I was back to normal, my desire to do anything relating to golf had dissipated to zero. I think with this one, I realized that starting at a later age, I would never realistically be able to put in the hours to hit an acceptable skill floor. Worth noting - in contrast to some other ball sports, I seem to have no natural aptitude for this one.
Photography & drawing: I took classes in each of these within the last five years. I do take my DSLR along if I go somewhere interesting, and I actually think I can take some good pictures; but that's all. I never come up on a random day off and think, "I'll get the camera out and go take pictures of things." Drawing is similar except I never did acquire facility at it. In general, I don't think I'm a very visual person; none of the hobbies that I have kept involve creating anything with visually pleasing outputs.
Scuba diving: I did all the classroom and pool portions of the PADI cert, and then got bored with it and stopped. I think this is just because I live in the Midwest; if I lived by a large body of water maybe I'd carry on, but as it stands, it's too inconvenient to pursue this. But I also don't think I was as into it as my peers in the class. As is, I suppose, typical for a hobby you try and drop, I only thought, "This is kind of neat," not, "I love this!"
Drawing as well, here. I never was going to be able to enough time to be good, but I took lessons, read a lot of books, and practiced quite a decent amount in both traditional and digital forms, and I've either gotten worse or learned to notice the flaws in what I was doing more. There's some really fundamental skill related to taking the visual composition of something apart into its components, and I can do that mechanically, but whatever's necessary for art just isn't something I've been able to grapple with. I can trace fine (or at least not so bad as to be actively painful to watchers), so I've started using some of those resources for other tasks, like woodblock or airbrush work, but that first step is just beyond me.
I'm not very good at woodworking, either -- I'm too afraid of the tools -- but I've kept at it, since it's useful even if you're awful. Will admit I haven't made anything like a full furniture set, though, either.
Stained glass was one I thought would be fun, and I can do it, but was never really interesting enough to keep my attention after three or four pieces.
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