When hobbies die

Posted on: 15 October 2025

I’ve always considered myself a hobbyman. I get into things in a big way and they invariably take quite a hold of my life (and bank balance). Now in my mid-to-late 30s, I’ve had quite a few over the years. Minor hobbies can rumble along indefinitely, such as playing football once a week, big major ones tend to come and go. Burning bright but eventually fading into insignificance.

The first major hobby I can remember in my life was wrestling. This gripped me in my early years of secondary school. WWF (soon to be WWE) was in its heyday, and merchandise was everywhere - costumes, video games, toys. There was a rarity about watching it on TV, as it was only available on satellite, something I didn’t have growing up.

It was also the early noughties and the start of my exposure to the internet. After playing around in various AOL chatrooms and early websites, keen to indulge my hobby, I stumbled across “e-feds”. They were crudely-put-together websites representing a fictional wrestling federation, made up of rosters of fictional wrestlers. You’d sign up, create a wrestler persona and write stories involving your character interacting with other characters. The organiser of the website would then write whole “events” (pay-per-views) pitting one wrestler against another. Whoever had written the best stories in the lead-up would take the victory, and possibly a title.

It sounds incredible lo-fi now, but this was the early days of the Internet. I put the experience down as igniting my interest in writing. As an impressionable 12 year old, it was a yet another exciting facet in which to indulge my love of wrestling.

Alongside the writing, I played the video games, watched the events, talked about it with my friends at school and acted out the wrestling moves on whatever soft surface I could find (trampolines were my favourite).

Music, guitar, and my teenage years

I don’t remember going off wrestling, but I think I reached a point in adolescence where wrestling was no longer the “in” thing. Socialising, music and parties were starting to be of interest. This lead me down the path of learning guitar. I’d picked up a few instruments growing up but none stuck. But the electric guitar wasn’t just an instrument. It was a statement. It had the power to define you in the social ecosystem of secondary school. Or that was my thinking at least.

I was big into my guitar-heavy music at the time - in large part due to my exposure to wrestling and its love for heavy riffs and loud vocals. I put all my time and energy into replicating my favourite songs on my first guitar. It was a Squire Strat, with a Fender Frontman 15G amplifier. Due to the growing availability of guitar tabs on the Internet, I didn’t require any formal lessons. I just listened to the music I liked, looked up the tab, and tried to follow along.

Having a bit of extra side income around 16 years old, I was able to indulge my hobby further, purchasing a well-worn Gibson Les Paul Studio off eBay. It was shortly after that, I got together with a few friends and formed a band. A drummer, guitarist and bass/vocals. We later added a second guitarist. My music tastes had shifted from rock to indie, and I have core memories of playing music with my friends in the mid-noughties, when indie music was everywhere in the UK.

I was fascinated by music and guitar forums on the Internet and researched all manner of guitar and recording equipment. I picked myself up some cheap recording equipment and started jamming at my computer and recording riffs.

In my college years at school, the band picked up a few gigs. We played our school’s rock show - Glastonbrooke, various parties, a gig at a nightclub and several other events. I was far out of my comfort zoned, but fuelled by camaraderie with my friends and my love for playing music.

As my college years ended and my university days in Brighton began, along with it I brought my love for playing music. I was introverted, no doubt, but determined to find likeminded people and join a band at university. Sadly, for one reason or another, this never materialised. My first few months at university were tough. I struggled to find my people. My guitar and amp sat in my room for all of University, played almost daily, but sadly never again gracing a stage.

Uni days and photography

My love for music remained, but alongside it, bubbled interest in other creative pursuits. Namely, photography. In my second year of uni I purchased my first Apple Macbook. I felt like a real creative. Shortly after that, I purchased my first DSLR camera. I can’t remember exactly how my interest in photography came about.

A keen interest in photography lead me down the strobist route - the use of portable flashes and lighting accessories to create interesting lighting effects. I got big into the technical side of photography. Around 09/10, I was blogging a lot about it. I followed photographers on Flickr like Dustin Diaz and Ed McGowan, and explored the older work of Joe McNally. I was hooked. I took photos wherever I went. I loved pouring what little money I had as a recent graduate into this new hobby. I was a gear-head, feverishly researching all manner of tech around photography - new lenses, filters, flashes, light modifiers, stands, you name it.

In the early 2010s, I moved back to Brighton after landing a job, and got a taste for the nightlife and music scene. My interest in photography, whilst present, started to wane. I treated myself to a camera upgrade with some of my extra income - a Nikon D7000 - perhaps as a way to reignite my hobby. But I never loved that camera nearly as much as my nifty D40.

Live music in my 20s

In Brighton I was spoilt for choice of gig venues, and an hour from London, I once again fell in love with live music, this time as a consumer. Whilst never prolific, live music was a common activity in my mid-20s. It was also a fun crossover between photography and music; I loved capturing the bright lights and energetic performances. I have fond memories of buying physical tickets at our local music shop Resident in Brighton’s North Laine.

Live music was never a core hobby like some of my others in my life, but it perfectly complemented other “interests” in my 20s - going out and drinking. This was a pretty baron time of my life for genuine hobbies, but I had a bit of money, and had no problem spending it on just having fun.

Football culture

Football has been a mainstay in my life, from early childhood to present. I’ve always loved playing the sport, and have dipped in and out of watching it over the years. With a dependable income in my mid-20s, I began swapping gigs for football matches. What began as the odd match in 2012 grew into a primary hobby by 2015 that slowly consumed my weekends.

I had a small group of friends who also supported Chelsea and lived near enough to attend matches on a fairly regular basis. I had a Chelsea membership and back in the late 2010s, buying tickets was relatively straight forward. Going to Chelsea’s home matches started to feel like an almost spiritual experience. The occasional away day always proved to be memorable, one way or another.

In 13/14, I attended 12 games, 16 the next season and by 2018 my tally was 26 matches in 1 season. I had spreadsheets (because of course) to make ticket buying easier and tracking what matches I’d attended and the associated costs. I began planning trips around football games I wanted to go to. In late 2018, I attended my first European away game, in Budapest. That season I saw a record 42 matches.

It was a costly hobby, but one I threw myself into. I felt like it was good for me. An introvert at heart, there was something truly primal about letting yourself go in a football stadium. Far from the healthiest of hobbies, with it came a lot of beer and fast food. But I felt a sense of belonging. The thrum of matchday pulled me in at the end of every working week. I was still young and free of responsibility, and could manage the late nights and hangovers. Some of my core memories of my 20s are enjoying pizza and a pint in a west London pub pre-game, chatting all things football.

And football culture seeped into other parts of my life, like my wardrobe. There is a distinct fashion around football, from the mods and smartly-dressed hooligans in the 80s, to the casuals of the modern game. I started buying higher end polos and jumpers unconsciously; clearly absorbing the fashions around me on the football terraces.

Vegan food and photography, and the pandemic

Perhaps it was the unhealthiness that led to one of my larger lifestyle shifts around this time. I dabbled in vegetarianism for a year in 2016, but it never stuck. ut veganism pulled me back in in late 2018 as I turned 30. You can read in detail about my journey a year into veganism on my blog. It made going to the football a little more challenging, but it lead me to meeting Mundo, a fellow vegan and Chelsea fan on Twitter.

I was about to go through another big life change in late 2019. My wife and I welcomed our son into the world, our first child. Somehow I managed to blag going to a few games in the 19/20 season, including a few memorable ones with Mundo. It was short-lived however, as football, and the rest of the world, came to an abrupt halt in March 2020.

The world stopped, momentarily. I’d already begun capturing some of my vegan creations, both on my blog and on Instagram. And suddenly having a lot of time on my hands, I threw myself into this more.

I briefly dabbled in the influencer world, deciding against pursuing that, but still happily capturing most of the food I’d make or order. I still had a love for photography, but the clunky DSLR had long been replaced with the ever-capable smart phone camera. The ease of which I could capture and share had me hooked.

But posting food pics 2 or 3 times a day was never really going to be a long-lasting hobby. As the World started up again, my prolificacy on Instagram died down.

Running for my life

And so began another hobby. A big one. Like most people my age, exercise was one of the few approved “releases” during lockdown. I’d actually picked up running again a few years earlier, when I was introduced one Saturday morning to Parkrun by my wife. When it fitted in with my football schedule for the weekend, I regularly made the short walk down to Preston Park to run a social 5k at 9am on a Saturday morning.

Momentum was slow, but the ball with in motion. A hobby invigorated by the various lockdowns lead to me chasing PBs several nights a week. Moving out of Brighton to Burgess Hill in late-2020 gave me a whole new town and set of country lanes to explore on foot.

Inspired watching my sister run Brighton Marathon in 2021, I signed up to run Brighton Half in 2022. From that point on I was hooked. I’d started Parkrun back up and was chasing faster and faster times each Saturday. By the end of 2023, I was running 4-5x a week, up to 60km and mildly addicted to the notion of performance and self-improvement.

Injuries hit, as they inevitably do, and I learned about the importance of strength training. But since then I’ve gone from strength to strength in my running. It has slowly but surely taken hold of my life in more ways than I could’ve imagined. My training has adapted, PBs have flowed, and my desire to sink as much of my free time and income into the sport continues to grow.

Where will my running go? Will my body allow me to continue in my relentless pursuit of improvement year-on-year? Who knows, and at the moment that’s exciting. There’s no ceiling other than my own desire to keep pushing my limits. A lot of my social circles now revolve around running, it’s become my identity to a large extent.

Hobbies have the power to reprogram you as a human. Embrace them. You are your hobbies.