Balance other hobbies?

[selfdestroyer]

How do you guys do it.. I am pretty deep into a few other hobbies and I find it hard to bounce between them. A lot of how I do it is by the weather. There are many things I cant/wont do when the heat is over 95 degrees. I usually bring my soldering station in the house and take over the kitchen table (The wife approves) so I can get some pedals done but I hate not working on them in the garage with all my tools present.

Also, I am a photographer.. this one has been on the back burner since I hit pedal building hard. (Shameless plug http://photography.codydeschenes.com) I really love to landscapes but that obviously reqieres me to go out side.. so hot summers seem to slow me down on this also.

Lastly, I am a gamer at heart and have been gaming since I got my first Atari 2600. With a bad collecting habit in place I started collecting and repairing/modding gaming consoles. Here is an older pick of about 75% of my collection. (http://www.evolvingconsole.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Arcade_Consoles.jpg)

And the most important for last. My wife of 14 years has been a great inspiration and support for me. She does not necessarily "get" my hobbies/obsessions but she understands the need for them and supports them as best as she can. With each of my hobbies she contributes in her own way. With the Pedal building, she helps with design and colors/knob schemes and like watching me get so excited that I want to hear the thing as soon as the last wire is placed. With the photography its a way for her to get out of the house and drive around with me to find interesting places the shoot. It usually turns into eating out also. With gaming there is not much she can do other than watch me play if she wants.. she is not a player bu any means. She does like some of the more cinematic games like recently "The Last of Us" and the "Uncharted" series.

All in all I would like to know how you guys/gals balance your hobbies & family.

[hammerheadmusicman]

Luckily for me i only have two hobbies really, pedal building, and playing guitar although I am full time degree student in the Uk, on a very demanding Guitar specific course. I am also solely a working musician, at the moment i'm away on a gig for 4 months. So for me it is a weird one, i have three main aspects to my life, all different and all completely linked, all hobbies/all work i guess!

Again, for me I am very lucky in the way that my future wife is a professional vocalist, and is very understanding, and lets me get away with filling the house with more gear than i need. But she is also away on this gig, so that's a bonus too.

Sometimes i find it very hard to juggle, degree, pedals, guitar and work. But, you just gotta do it!

May i also add, sweet jesus that's a lot of games! As someone who has spent two years battling with RSI in both wrists/Elbows, i can safely say, that room would destroy me!

[GermanCdn]

My competing hobbies typically balance themselves out, oddly enough.  

Beside my pedal building desk is my fly tying desk, so I alternate between the two by rotating my build chair (i.e get frustrated with a build, swivel over and tie a dozen flies, etc).  

Since fishing season only runs from about May through October here, if it's a nice day, I'll be out on the river as opposed to hiding in my basement (that won't happen this year, as recent floods have absolutely destroyed my favourite spots).  

Photography is a joint thing my wife and I do together, and almost all of it involves mountains, rivers, flowers, or animals, so we set up road trips for exactly that purpose.  

My wife's very supportive of my hobbies, though she doesn't understand them, because they keep me fairly grounded in an otherwise fairly high stress life I function in on a day to day basis.  The biggest problem with my hobbies is that most of them involve me sitting at a desk, and I do that all day anyway, and my gut is getting far too big to not start getting some outdoor hobbies.

[midwayfair]

Usually I obsess over something until I no longer get enjoyment out of it and then move on. Usually that moment comes when I feel like I've exhausted everything that can be had out of a hobby short of doing it professionally. I actually did try to do writing professionally, but just like anything else artistic it generally comes down to either knowing someone or being so absurdly persistent -- basically, eating and breathing "selling" your art to a gatekeeper -- that you eventually "get lucky"; and successful self-publication in fiction is both near-impossible and highly, highly stigmatized in a way that simply doesn't matter in visual or audio arts. To be fair, I've never completely given up on writing (or guitar playing), which has been my "hobby" since I was like 6. But my lack of ability to obsess over writing any more is a detriment to finishing something at the moment.

My other hobbies besides pedals are cooking -- which, you know, I have to do to eat -- and playing guitar, which I have to do to test pedals.

[Hangingmonkey]

Yay, i saw a c64 in there on that pic. Last ninja 2 and salamander were 2 games i loved in my early teens.

[stevie1556]

Apart from plucking a few strings on the guitar wishing I could play like Gary Moore (well used to play anyway), I love building pedals, especially when they work first time! I got a house with the misses nearly a year ago now, so been teaching myself to cook. Good rock songs playing, cooking away, I'm in my own little world and absolutely love it!

Also, since we moved in together, I brew my own wines and ciders. Some of the best wine I've made (and the cheapest at 65p a bottle!) has been using fruit juice! The only trouble is everytime friends come over my alcohol cupboard gets raided! I generally make cider from a kit, but also had good results using apple juice and a flavour of some kind. I've got ribena cider on the go at the moment, can't wait to try it out!

Oh, and the Xbox. I love my Xbox! More of a social thing really, as I moved 40 mins away from my family and friends to get a house with her, I generally play it with my best mate over Live. Either Call Of Duty or F1 2012. With the F1 game, we do a full season in each team, 1 hour practise session, 45 mins of qualifying split over the 3 sessions, followed by a full length race! We have decided to try and visit as many of the race tracks as possible from next year onwards. I went to a motor show at one of the horse racing tracks here the other week, went in the F1 simulator they had, and got the 2nd quickest time of the day! That was a proud moment.

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[Gledison]

jizzz, listening to you guys i started to think that is really true that pedal building is addictive! well, my main hobby is playing guitar and since i started building my first pedal, not much time for playing...damn it!

[ch1naski]

Right. Two main hobbies: playing guitar, and building pedals.

I can't even balance THOSE out....

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[Willybomb]

Dude!  You have a Vextrex!

[selfdestroyer]

Dude!  You have a Vextrex!

Haha yeah.. I only have 4 or 5 games for it and the overlays but it does not get much use.. Thats kind of my problem with the gaming hobby. It takes up a lot of room and time to organize it all. But it is really fun to get the friends together and play some classics not on a emulator but on the real thing... If I'm going to play Mario Bros. I want the blister on my thumb from the NES controller like I had when I was a kid.

Some really great comments here.. Thanks for sharing people.

[DutchMF]

Right. Two main hobbies: playing guitar, and building pedals.

I can't even balance THOSE out....

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This! At the moment not a lot of both as I've had to put in a lot of extra hours at work. And the weather's been real nice lately, so the weekends are mostly spent outdoors. But next thursday I'll be making some music again, jam night with my favourite rhythm section (my best friend Rene on bass and a madly talented, but unfocused drummer. He really should play in a steady band....) and a saxophone player! Nice.....

Paul

[GermanCdn]

and a madly talented, but unfocused drummer. He really should play in a steady band

Isn't that pretty much status quo for all drummers (i.e. focus is not in the job description)?  Last drummer I had, we specifically arranged all rehearsals at his place (well, truthfully, his girlfriends, because as the joke goes, what do you call a drummer without a girlfriend?  Homeless), and he still couldn't make it to practice on time, even though he slept and ate there.

[DutchMF]

Don't get me started on drummers! I'm going to this jam night because the drummer from my regular band is in jail! (no joke, wasn't a really serious crime, but you can't just not pay so many parking and speeding tickets and then get pulled over DUI.... he's just a really dumb guy..... sigh...) Between that and our singer having some health problems and the other guitar player being on holiday my band is shot for the next couple of weeks, so the whole jam night is a pretty sweet deal!

Paul

[ThePastRecedes]

Is anybody else here a glassblowers? I tend to avoid doing it in the summer. Usually only a an hour a week or so simple because it's too hot. It easily gets 50ºC in the workshop. But if I can I'll go in for 3 hours on a cool evening or morning. In the winter it's lovely coming in from the Canadian weather in to the wonderful warmth.

I've been doing it for about a year now. I only go the workshop a few hours a week so I have plenty of time for my other hobbies and work.

Note: Not me

[GermanCdn]

My wife used to be into glassblowing, but that was before we got married.  She worries about me burning down the house with an unattended soldering iron, so I'm certain any firework is long behind us.

What part of Canada are you in?