i have kids and hobbies. snowboarding in winter , cycling in summer.

I dont count going to the gym as a hobby, more of an essential maintenance task. I work four days a week, 32 hours max. Then you have time for all of it. no money to indulge in anything fancy mind

Difficult one this

My hobbies are fairly kit intensive and take me away from home – cycling, motorbikes, outdoorsy activities (bikepacking, hiking, wild camping etc)

I also have 2 young kids so most of the time I don’t have time for the hobbies. Motorbikes have fallen off a cliff, though I’d like to change that this year

I can get the kids involved to a point, but the wife isn’t keen on those hobbies so it’s still not ideal

It’s just a balancing act I guess. I find cycle commuting helps a lot, even if that’s just to keep fitness up. Extending cycle commutess or taking the kids out of on the bike are very satisfying!

mark90 – Member

I’ve come to the conclusion that you can never get on top of the chores. So do some (essential) chores but spend some time with the family and spend some time on hobbies. If I didn’t choose to leave some chores waiting I would spend all my time on them, and I’d be even worse to live with!

Oh, don’t worry! It’s only the essential chores that get done!! I’ve got 2 pages of A4 of ‘jobs that need doing’, but new ones pop up to the top before these ones get done!

Cougar – Moderator

(I do hope that her gender was merely for information and doesn’t preclude you from including her in your hobbies when she’s older…)

No way she’d getting involved in manly activities. She’ll be baking cakes with mummy & learning how the washing machine works…..
HA HA! Only joking – I hope we find a balance with her where she can do her own things (girlie if she wants) but equally feels comfortable going for a cycle with me or helping me in the garden/garage. Whatever she wants to do, really.
We got her a Toot Toot sit & ride race car for Christmas that I guess is more boy oriented, than girlie but she loves it….
Likewise with clothing – if something looks like it’ll suit her better & it’s in the boys section – we’ll get her it. Generally, it seems the boys get dinosaurs & exciting stuff like that – the girls get t-shirts that say ‘I love mummy’…..

I gave up motorsport (never could afford to go stage rallying, but used to do a few autotests and nav rallies) when I had my firstborn.

I do miss it, but I’ve been commuting further and really enjoying the increased fitness, MTBing is now fully a hobby and not an essential exercise regime, and kept up my climbing to some degree too.

There is some balance to be struck, my thinking for now is I’ll probably go back to at least autotesting at some point (probably when kids are old enough to have a go), and if I end up with some spare cash might do something a bit more serious when I’m too old to race bikes etc.

I don’t know any children of my age who’ve actually suffered at all from parents having hobbies – to the contrary they’ve benefited from the experience of these and often taken them up.

Get kids to share your hobbies, no? I thought that was one of the perks of breeding.

Now my 2 are older it gets easier. Daughter is 18 and pretty much does her own thing now. Son is 12 and we do lots together. He loves playing rugby so I got involved with helping out with the team. I enjoy running so I spelled out the benefits of additional training and he does Parkrun every weekend with me and the occasional 5K race. He got a bike at Christmas so he will help me to get out and ride more.

Aside from that my other hobbies are the gym which I do before work, so no impact on family time there; cooking, we all need to eat 8) and reading which helps me unwind at the end of the day, so again no impact.

If my hobbies were impacting on other areas of my life or I felt like I was stretching myself too thin, then one would go. Simple.

I hope we find a balance with her where she can do her own things (girlie if she wants) but equally feels comfortable going for a cycle with me or helping me in the garden/garage. Whatever she wants to do, really.

Awesome. (-:

If my hobbies were impacting on other areas of my life or I felt like I was stretching myself too thin, then one would go. Simple.

Black market or adoption?

Too many hobbies going on for me, but meh, I sometimes struggle to stay focused on any one thing so it’s good to have other stuff to move on to. As far as sport goes, main thing for me is triathlon, which is all about being bad at 3 things anyway. Other than that it’s photography, guitars, scuba and wargaming stuff.

I’ve started to really struggle with this, moved to Norfolk from a great MTB area as it is where my wife was from and wanted to move back, lovely area but it means i have to travel to see old friends or ride mountain bike properly, not helped by the fact that i love cycling of any sort, hiking and camping, but my wife does not and my daughter is a real “girlie” girl who has no interest either.

I struggle now to get away for weekends, as my daughter is Type 1 diabetic too, so i feel i go away i leave my wife to do everything all weekend.

But there are ways, if we go some where for the day, i stick bike rack on wife’s car and i’ll cycle there, meet them there and cycle back, so still spend the day with them.

Extended lunch at work, so i take 90 minutes, so quick spin on bike or to the gym.

Other than that, you have to really sit down and decide which events you’d like to do that year and try and tie them in as best as possible.

One thing that did help, was riding a series of events to raise money for Diabetes UK, gave me a reason to train and a justification to my wife to be out on the bike at 5am on a saturday!

It’s just got bloody expensive and frustrating to compete recently. That’s ‘in my blood’ more than anything, but the least good for my health, finances and relationships.

I’m in the same boat although I was doing sprints & hillclimbs not rallying, getting to my mid thirties and deciding that was the time for children meant one hobby was always going to suffer. I’ve still got the race car and will go back to it at some point, my daughter is nearly 2 so things are getting a bit less hectic.

It was hard to chose between racing and mountain biking but riding is just easier (and a lot cheaper!) and I live 10 mins from the Quantocks which helps. I’m also lucky that I work in motorsport and get to work on cars a lot nicer than I was racing so in one way it doesn’t really feel like I’ve given up that hobby as I do it for a job 😆

I have a toddler.

She has removed all spare time that was otherwise spent on hobbies. She’s also solved the problem of what to do with the spare money that was freed up by not having those hobbies any more.

Still, only 20 years or so until she moves out and life goes back to normal…

Hmmm, the common theme here seems to be the arrival of children dictating how much time and money are available. Kids aren’t on the horizon, and I’m in a relatively fortunate, (if not quite complicated) stable position as far as finances/living arrangements go at present.

Thing is, my bikes aren’t really worth selling as they’re not last year’s T130C RS or the latest Orange Five whatever, they’re all built from bits, 2 of them to suit a now obsolete wheel size.

The guns, well, I’ll always want/have to have guns, we live on a farm, a lot of my friends (and my other half) shoot and I enjoy it, we don’t actually shoot much (in terms of numbers, not frequency) so it doesn’t cost me a lot in cartridges. The guns aren’t hugely valuable, one was given to me, one was a couple of hundred quid, the last is probably worth getting on for a grand on a good day, but it’s appreciated since I’ve had it. I suspect as I get older more shooting will be done.

The rally car – I am emotionally attached to it having had it so long and had some good results, though it’s a turbulent relationship. Competing is ace, the most fun, but it nearly always needs something doing at fair expense, and it’s not like I race on nice dry tarmac in the summer, it’s generally on loose surfaces in crap weather, so working on it isn’t the most pleasant. I reckon it costs me £2k a year to store/tax/MOT/insure it, before it turns a wheel. It’s worth about the same as a top spec’d Stanton hardtail I’d say……

Clearly, having typed all of the above, I’m not really ready to get rid of anything. They’re all really things that don’t cost money if you don’t use them, with the exception of the rally car, which would be £200 or so a year just to insure if it was SORN’d and I kept it at home.

A thought has crossed my mind though, that perhaps in some people the need to keep oneself occupied and partake in hobbies arises due to there being something lacking in other areas of life?

I may fall into that category to some degree though I’d have to have a hobby of some sort whatever was going on in my life, I never have and don’t think I ever will be the sort of person to sit around, happily doing nothing, though I can appreciate time to do that, when I need it. I put a hammock up in the garden last year.

Let me know when you find out will you? I can run at a moment’s notice on great offroad, so that needs no planning and I can’t just jump on that with a spare 30 mins+. Great biking too. Just getting back into climbing again after not having enough time when the kids were young. Wish I had time for more cross riding/racing. That pile of unread Singletracks says I’m probably not really an MTBer any more. Those bikes in the shed mean I can easily go back to it though. Quite fancy a trials m/bike…

In addition to the above, I really want a road bike, to replace my full sus, replace one gun, get another 2 guns. Then motorbikes – I want an enduro and a trials bike and to build a street tracker/scrambler from an 80’s Yamaha.

I’ve also always longed for a classic mini. Though always talk myself out of it because I couldn’t be doing with the constant rot-chasing and having to spend £5k to buy a nail that needs a new roll of mig wire putting in to it. That definitely won’t ever happen.

Oh, and I really could do with a more pratical vehicle instead of/in addition to my DS3 for biking and shooting.

When’s the lottery on?

In addition to the above, I really want to buy an road bike, replace my full sus, replace one gun, get another 2 guns. Then motorbikes – I want an enduro and a trials bike and to build a street tracker/scrambler from an 80’s Yamaha.

I’ve also always longed for a classic mini. Though always talk myself out of it because I couldn’t be doing with the constant rot-chasing and having to spend £5k to buy a nail that needs a new roll of mig wire putting in to it.

Oh, and I really could do with a more pratical vehicle instead of/in addition to my DS3 for biking and shooting.

When’s the lottery on?

The troll in me wants to suggest that your favourite hobby might in fact be buying stuff…

😳

You might be right!

But on second thoughts, I’ve got access to the land and terrain to do all of those things, and friends who do then all, so they’re accessible.

Wish I had time for hobbies and I’m single, kid free. Running a business takes up so much time that even on my day off there is catching up to do, shopping etc that by the time that’s done there is only time for a quick bike ride.

Suppose my only daily hobby is walking the dog.

Looks like bikes are recreation, shooting is social and rallying a passion. You can only really have one passion, and for you that is motorsport. Mine is cycling. For others it is shooting. I like shooting, but have little talent and am just happy to dabble n he odd social occasion. My stepfather competes nationally in small bore. You can’t really dabble in competitive motorsport, nor bike racing. Former will be cost, the latter time (15 hrs a week training!)

You do need to make a choice, But don’t need our blessing to accept that your passion is rallying. My son’s is flying. And he’s a much better shot than me!

I am still trying to work this one out – and at the same time failing to do any of them properly! Slowly starting to mountain bike again, motorbike is mainly the lighter months (March – October) and mostly consists of a few social weekends for the moment. Guitar… utter backboiler at the moment, has been for a long time – although if we ever do get either the band back together, or form that supergroup I keep threatening to do….

Which just leaves photography. I squeeze that in everyday, but there are vague plans afoot to switch that to the career and not bother too much about earning more than I need to raise the family.

Oh… and surfing… lets just not go there eh! I am absolutely shocking at it, but do have a lovely longboard just waiting for me to find time to master it!

Since kids (and previous life falling apart) I haven’t really had much time or inclination to do anything properly. Hopefully this is the year all that starts to change.

I think part of my problem is I get bored too easily and spend too much time on the internet. Genuinely, I see something I like, that is achievable and I start making plans.

Whilst it’s good, it also fuels my (unrealistic) fantasies living in an area where there’s so much to do, and so many people who can make it happen, I know a lot of people who are in to different things and have the talents to build/modify/procure stuff easily.

In any case, I think this thread has made me have a think about it all. I’ve already talked myself out of several things. And found a rally to enter in the summer, just need a navigator now!