Hobby to take up for a 71-year-old

January 1, 2023 3:53 PM

I'm cutting costs, cutting ties, and getting rid of my car. And I'm getting on in years. What interesting activity do you think should I take up next?

I really like learning new things. I've taught myself to knit, sew, and do calligraphy. I'm studying French again. I"ve written and published novels.

I even took up a new sport in my forties and did really well at it. However, it's not a new sport to me any more. This next national tournament is going to be my last. I'm burnt out. I don't want to travel to places I'm not interested in (every national tournament I attend). I don't want to drive out to the practice facility any more (I'm ready to give up driving and I want to give up the car). I'm trying to decide what I can start doing now.

Prior thread here, but I'm not necessarily looking for social stuff. I just like challenges.

I live in a fairly big city so there's a lot of resources. What's a great hobby (sport, course, activity, pursuit, interest) you would recommend? Steep learning curves are okay, because apparently I like feeling idiotic, but I'm interested in something where they wouldn't make me leave just because of my age.

posted by Peach to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (37 answers total)

Best answer: Learn a musical instrument and then join the local community band. Learning music engages so many parts of the brain, it is a great challenge if you haven't do it before. Once you get up to a minimum level of ability, joining a community band provides the social context as well as the impact of being part of a larger, coherent whole.
posted by metahawk at 3:59 PM on January 1, 2023 [10 favorites]

Best answer: if given the time, I'd take up piano. So many genres to explore, and I feel like it's a great way to eat up free time. It can also be social and antisocial, depending on what you do with it.
posted by Toddles at 4:02 PM on January 1, 2023

Best answer: As far as music, also consider 'easy' stuff to like ukulele, harmonica, autoharp, dulcimer.

On the more crafting side:
Make/fly kites (Indian fighter kites especially)

Make/fly paper airplanes (or origami)

Make/use rope work (decorative knots, macrame, lash together shelves and plant stands)

On the more fidgety side:
Learn coin manipulation
/card tricks, or build coin towers or card towers.

On the sporty side:
Darts
Billiards
Bocce ball or lawn bowling
posted by SaltySalticid at 4:12 PM on January 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

Best answer: If you already knit & sew, try weaving. You can get a tabletop loom for not a lot of money - the search term you want is rigid heddle, Kromski is a good brand - and you can make use of your existing adjacent skills.
posted by each day we work at 4:19 PM on January 1, 2023 [3 favorites]

Geocaching can be fun if you enjoy walking & exploring new places.

If you like exploring cemeteries, you can create an account with findagrave.com & then take photos of headstones. When people request a specific stone & you have to find it, it's like geocaching for dead people.
posted by belladonna at 4:22 PM on January 1, 2023 [5 favorites]

Competitive pinball is revived these days. Super fun.
posted by u2604ab at 4:23 PM on January 1, 2023

Biketouring/bikepacking. You can spend lots of time planning where to go and because the bike is carrying most of the load, you don't have to be as obsessive about how much stuff weighs (but you can be if you want to). You can "credit card tour" (stay in hotels/motels a lot) or camp out, it's up to you. There are LOTS of people your age doing it - whenever I tour I meet lots of folks in their 70s, some of whom have been doing it for 50 years, some of whom just started recently. It's also a good hobby for learning mechanical skills as it's important to be able to make simple repairs yourself.
posted by threementholsandafuneral at 4:32 PM on January 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

I highly recommend piano! I'm slightly older, and recently took up piano as my next "interesting activity". I got an electric keyboard and just finished the first semester of beginner piano class at the local community college. Taking a class has social benefits that I wouldn't have with private lessons, and it would be too easy to go wrong and/or get bored trying to learn by myself.
posted by anadem at 6:17 PM on January 1, 2023

Best answer: YouTube is a great source of self-working card tricks. Self Working is the magic phrase to use in your search. These tricks do themselves as long as you follow the directions exactly (thus the name.)

I have learned several, and often show them students on a review for test day since I usually have time left over. They are often amazed, even if they “don’t like card tricks”.
posted by wittgenstein at 6:18 PM on January 1, 2023

Try community theater
posted by TimHare at 6:41 PM on January 1, 2023 [3 favorites]

You want a challenge? Try community government -- look into committees, elections, HOA stuff, voter education, etc. These are super hard things when you get into them, I believe.
posted by amtho at 7:08 PM on January 1, 2023 [8 favorites]

Is there a books-to-prisoners organization in your town? Thinking about something on the activist continuum...
posted by latkes at 7:19 PM on January 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

Pickleball and ceramics. My mom has loved pickleball these last few years, and learning to throw pots on the wheel has saved my mental health in the same period.

Plein-air painting, possibly with watercolors, or maybe printmaking? If you live near an art school, look into their extension courses.

Telemarking sounds good to me, or snowshoeing or cross-country skiing.
posted by Lawn Beaver at 7:27 PM on January 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Bobbin lace making! It’s an incredible puzzle, as simple or as challenging as you’d like, and it’s a wonderfully tactile art.
posted by ReginaHart at 7:50 PM on January 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

Gardening can have a steep learning curve if you're trying to eat most of your food from what you grow/harvest. There's lots of factors to juggle (such as when to plant, what nutrients, what plants grow best together, and like a million more factors). And then there's seed saving.
posted by aniola at 8:58 PM on January 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

Oh, I hear the harp is ergonomic.
posted by aniola at 8:59 PM on January 1, 2023

Recumbent bicycles are also ergonomic.
posted by aniola at 9:00 PM on January 1, 2023

> I just like challenges. ... Steep learning curves

attelier art classes using the teaching methods of academic realism, (and then use that as a basis to do your own thing, if need be, cf. Van Gogh, Picasso.)
posted by sebastienbailard at 9:11 PM on January 1, 2023

Fostering animals!
posted by kapers at 10:16 PM on January 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

Best answer: How do you feel about "tech?"

Have you ever considered drawing or sketching? If that appeals, have you ever considered computer animation?

Given that you've published in established formats, do you have an idea that a new medium might show off well?

The learning curve is steep, the cost of entry is a high quality tablet for the purpose (but it'll also still be an amazing general-use tablet). There are lots of free-as-in-beer software, well supported by users (forums/ fora).
posted by porpoise at 12:00 AM on January 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

I see biking has been suggested already: don't forget to investigate e-bikes! Just the thing when the old leg muscles and backside aren't what they used to me.

Various kinds of dance are social, good for you and have no limit on how good you can get if you want to push it.

If you want intellectual challenge and progression: what about learning to program? The perspective of older people is SORELY lacking in our industry, it is fun even to get to the point of creating a button that does something when you press it, and it can be a genuinely useful skill to write small programs for yourself.

Local activism in your city is also a good option if you treat lobbying and organising as learnable skills you can study and improve. No limit there either if you get good at it.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 12:02 AM on January 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

It's also a good hobby for learning mechanical skills as it's important to be able to make simple repairs yourself.

Learning to repair or restore things is also a good hobby.

Stained glass hasn't been mentioned, so there's that. And mosaic art.
posted by trig at 3:13 AM on January 2, 2023

Best answer: As you already mention languages, how about learning Sign Language as well? Best learned in person in regular group classes, and there's plenty of resources online too.

Further, to possibly compliment your calligraphy, what about taking up carving? ie wood carving / relief carving / leather carving / etc..
In the process of learning to carve, you'll also learn very useful knife sharpening (which can be taken to extreme levels) to keep those tools pointy.
posted by many-things at 3:25 AM on January 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

On the less crafty side of things, you could take up documenting your city or neighborhood - whether by drawing (or modeling, or animating) buildings, landscapes, or maps, or interviewing local people, or tracing the history of the area or of specific places in it. If you end up becoming a sort of expert on the area you could even start giving tours or presentations.
posted by trig at 5:33 AM on January 2, 2023

Competitive Scrabble
Chess
Knitting is surprisingly social and you can make beautiful, useful things.
Take programming classes; it's challenging, makes your brain gears grind in new ways. Make useful phone or other apps.
Learn to play an instrument; ukelele is popular as a starting point, and leads to guitar, other instruments. Learning to read music is a good challenge, applies to singing, too.
posted by theora55 at 6:20 AM on January 2, 2023

Quilting
Curling
E bikes are great for errands, especially for uphill. Get a carrier for shopping.
posted by Enid Lareg at 8:21 AM on January 2, 2023

Best answer: Steep learning curves are okay, because apparently I like feeling idiotic, but I'm interested in something where they wouldn't make me leave just because of my age.

I second i_am_joe's_spleen that learning to write computer programs is likely a good choice. You can do some of it at home and there are lots of opportunities to meet others, in person and over the Internet, to learn from each other and work together. There are many excellent free resources online to help you with your journey, especially the Q&A site Stack Overflow. If you want to just enjoy yourself you can make fun and useful things for yourself, and if you want to work with other people then the world of volunteer open source projects includes some that are happy to work with newer learners -- if that's interesting to you then ask a fresh Ask MetaFilter question about it and we'll give you some specific pointers. And there is always more challenge available -- learning more and more mindbending computer science concepts, building more and more complex codebases, and learning new domains (compilers, data science, optimizing for speed of execution, localization, user interface design, and more).
posted by brainwane at 9:05 AM on January 2, 2023

Best answer: I like the "learn a musical instrument" pitch, as I've both been taking voice lessons for a few years and trying to learn piano, but/and: I've gotten great value and a wonderful community from (modern western) square dancing. Specifically, gay square dancing, even though I identify as straight.

Square dancing can be as "shuffle around" as you want, or as "dance" as you want, and if you're not yet a dancer it helps your priorperception amazingly. I thought I hated dance, learned to square dance, and even though I was pretty athletic before it changed a lot of how my body interacts with the world. And I now like to dance.

Modern western square dance is that for math nerds, the dancers know what the calls do, but don't know in what order they'll be coming, so there's a lot of thinking about "okay, from here where do I end up?"

The gay and straight modern western square dance communities have grown up in the past half century side-by-side, they both use the same sets of calls, but the gay community is more fun and gets further away from a lot of the frankly negative culture that came from petticoats, Nudie suits, and 1950s country music.

If you have an IAGSDC club near you chances are they've got a class starting soon.
posted by straw at 9:45 AM on January 2, 2023

Seconding pickleball. It's all the rage with people your age and older. The players I know are very welcoming to new members to their cult.
posted by The corpse in the library at 2:09 PM on January 2, 2023

Pottery and sculpture
posted by slidell at 5:21 PM on January 2, 2023

You live in a city and don't want to drive... time to dive into the world of bicycles! There's so many different kinds of bikes and ways of being a bike person. You can bike for transportation or errands or just tooling around, and often you can bring your bike on the bus or train to expand where you bike. You can bike alone or with friends. Many cities and communities have social rides for a range of folks, whether those are themed, easy breezy rides or things that are more about going fast.
posted by bluedaisy at 10:46 AM on January 3, 2023

Response by poster: So many good suggestions! Thank you, all! I gave up my bike this year (bike riding in my city is even more dangerous than driving, honestly), and racquet sports a long while before that, but those too would be good suggestions for someone else looking for a hobby. I'm mulling over some choices and going to look into some ideas.
posted by Peach at 5:00 PM on January 3, 2023

Response by poster: Oh, and am wondering why no one suggested woodworking? :)
posted by Peach at 5:24 PM on January 3, 2023

Response by poster: (the woodworking crack is related to the last free thread and I realized afterwards it was silly because someone did suggest carving.)
posted by Peach at 6:29 PM on January 3, 2023

Best answer: I know several older women (at least two) who walk upwards of 10 miles a day, just, out for walks. You can track your walks and walk routes in such a way that you draw pictures with your route once they're uploaded to the internet.

Starting an org.

Build a loom. Rediscover the connection between looms and punch-card computers. Didn't suggest this earlier because you said you live in a big city. But if you think woodworking and pianos are options, maybe you have room for a loom.
posted by aniola at 7:04 PM on January 3, 2023

Best answer: If you're considering woodworking, I have a friend who has a hobby of scouring Craigslist/ FB Marketplace for old furniture that was constructed from quality wood - gets them, if cheap, and restores them in the 2nd bedroom of her condo/ apartment.

It's more than a self-sustaining hobby, money wise, and has been able to upgrade her tools. But she's been at it for years and is good at it. She also has a partner who can help with heavy lifting (although she's no slouch herself).

Mostly hand tools, but she does powered stripping/ sanding on weekends or weekday during working hours (her neighbours don't wfh).
posted by porpoise at 7:54 PM on January 3, 2023

Best answer: I've been doing linoleum carving and blockprinting the last few years and have been really enjoying it; the tools are simple and inexpensive, the process is fairly immediate (carve till you think you're done, make a print and see what you think, repeat as needed), and there's a deliberate physicality to the carving process that I find both engaging and meditative. For low-budget exploration, you can get started with basically just some art linoleum and a basic Speedball gouge kit, some water-based ink, and a brayer to apply ink. Everything else is gravy (and if you find you like it you can invest in that gravy later.)
posted by cortex at 3:11 PM on January 4, 2023