I was at a lull in my life and needed a passion when my girlfriend’s brother gifted her scuba diving lessons for her birthday as he was instructor. Scuba always looked cool so I signed myself up and eventually saved up enough to buy my own equipment. It eventually dawns on me that the oceans are quite a ways from Ohio. Now the price of traveling is a factor so camping is a way to keep the costs down. This soon leads to me taking up backpacking. It’s a hell of a lot cheaper than scuba. Diving is incredible but you spend a lot of dough to be underwater for an hour or less. While backpacking you are immersed 24/7 and it’s practically free once you have the gear. In fact I could argue I save money because I’d spend money at home just keeping occupied. Gas money to Pennsylvania is the biggest expense. Fast forward 25 years and carrying a pack is getting harder. By this time I’ve run into a lot of fly anglers along the trail and knew when it came time to hang up my pack I’d give fly fishing a try. Trout seem to live in the prettiest places and the sport attracts the nicest people.

So that’s how I became a fly fisherman. A long rambling point that I hope comes across to others seeking a passion is to just try something that looks fun. There’s no reason you can’t drop it if it’s not for you. Doing things exposes you to other things. The important thing is to not do anything

I didn’t wanna be fat in university so I started BJJ. Then I didn’t wanna be weak in BJJ so I started lifting weights. Then I wanted to make weight so I started eating better.

Kind of a slippery slope to health 🤷‍♂️.

Circumstance, really. Some things just stuck with me.

Went for a walk. Liked it. Walks got longer and longer while the equipment got better and better. Ended up with trekking.

“Hey, this card game looks pretty cool. Can you explain me the rules of it?” The bane of my wallet, Magic the Gathering, entered my life.

After oven pizza #2947294 “This tastes like shit. What am I doing to myself?” Learned to love cooking.

Knitting: My mom gave me a knitting book when I was little and I just kind of never stopped. I knit/craft on and off now.

Video Games: I guess I was just raised around them. My mom and grandma had a Nintendo, and my grandma had a Sega Genesis (she really like sonic). They were just always there in some capacity.

Birdwatching: I bought a bird feeder to give my cat some “cat TV” and now I’m just heavily invested in them for some reason. Merlin Bird ID is my pokedex ❤️

I have a flower garden because I like taking pictures of flowers and bees and butterflies and shit.

I have a camera because I wanted to have original photos of textures and objects to practice CV and photogrammetry techniques on. (I still haven’t really done that much of this, lol.)

I think the CS stuff generally was from a Stanford course on YouTube?

Guitar: as a kid I just thought it’d be awesome to shred. Now I mostly play acoustic fingerstyle, but shred some. Interest has ebbed and flowed over the years, but been playing forever.

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu: I wanted a challenge and to get good at something new. It’s hard, but I like it and just keep coming back. Been doing it for a couple years and am a blue belt.

Hiking: did it as a kid, now I do it with my wife who pushes me to hike more than I would otherwise which is good

Tech stuff: coding, piracy, stuff like that. Dad was in IT and taught me to look for solutions with tech. Never stopped. I’m not a fantastic coder, but use it for work and also to solve personal challenges, enter piracy.

By trying a lot of other shit I found out I wasn’t wasn’t into

• Video games: lifelong tech interest + it was what the other people in school were doing? I found that I like to compete as well
• Podcasts: monotonous tasks always really annoyed me as I was mentally understimulated. Listening to podcasts solved that particular issue, and now I can wash dishes and clean for days at a time
• Walking: I was overweight and wanted to change that, and I had trouble getting into running due to me finding it mind-numbingly boring. Just walking and walking a lot was very helpful in this regard. Combined with the aforementioned podcasts it was a winning combination
• Biking: I don’t own a car by choice, being able to get around more than just fine with transit where I live. During the pandemic while I was working from home, this became a challenge as I didn’t want to risk infection when going to buy food or other things. As such, I dusted off an old bicycle, and started using it to get around my local area. I quickly noticed that it was great fun to bike, despite having just a bog-standard terrible bike. I then changed jobs and wanted to go to the office more, and figured one day that I would try to combine my new-found interest in biking with my desire to be at the office by commuting by bike. It was a bit hard to justify time-wise as it was generally faster to go by transit, which motivated me to go faster every day to try to beat the transit alternative. As such, every day became two small races, and I fell in love. Cycling is way more fun than running and I have never been healthier than I am today, I believe.

3d printing: heard about it from a friend and started looking into it. Got hooked.

Laser etching/cutting: next logical step fron 3d peinting. Started researching. Got hooked.

Homebrewing: got hooked on craft beers as opposed to crap big brews. It’s expensive as hell so I started researching. Got hooked.

Moral of the story: careful what you research. You may get hooked.

TTRPGs: first system playing in college, I’ve been playing and running games for various groups over the last ~13 years.

Video games: played so much Donkey Kong Country with my dad as a little kid. Never truly stopped ever since.

3d modeling/animation: It’s my job, and I use it for personal reasons.

Cooking: Learned along side cooking with my parents and watching food network before it was overrun with competition cooking.