RE: HOBBIES, AGAIN

Tomasino asked about hobbies:

gopher://gopher.black/1/phlog/20261016-shakuhachi-is-calling

 Are you like this? Do you cycle through things, or can you hold
 steady to a hobby for longer than 2 months at a time?

I guess I like being prompted onto this topic because I just 
discovered I've already written a response about hobbies here six 
years ago:

gopher://aussies.space/0/~freet/phlog/2020-10-11.2RE_Hobbies.txt

I also remember at my school reunion a few years later, in an 
attempt to start a conversation I could actually participate in, 
asking a girl "do you have any hobbies?" and just getting an 
awkward look back. I don't know whether I should try and learn from 
that or not.

Anyway much like I described before, my hobbies are still to a 
large extent stuck with being more a means to an end rather than 
pure relaxation. I tend to consider them "projects", which might be 
framed within the scope of my hobbies, but often prioritised due to 
some practical need.

But I don't think this necessarily stops the issue of focus that 
Tomasino describes. I find myself often switching to new projects 
much like switching between hobbies. For example yesterday 
(Saturday) I really should have been working on installing a 
second-hand solar panel system I bought years ago, since the 
regulatory approvals for the inverter run out in a little over a 
month and then electricians might not agree to connect it to the 
house wiring. But I just hate the idea of trying to find an 
electrician to work with on it, basically due to the whole power 
imbalance of the situation: I'm paying them (a completely unknown 
amount - I'm thinking if they quote over $1000 I'll give up 
anyway), but they can demand I do things a certain way. So I have 
to try and develop a pitch to them, to try and get them to take the 
job, and reach an understanding clearly enough that they don't come 
back later and say "that's all wrong" and go away. So I need to 
mount a few panels up against the fence I want to fit them against, 
and build a frame to support the inverter with adequate weather 
protection and without messing up the metal cladding on the house, 
just to demonstrate. Then draw up diagrams, and then maybe all for 
nothing if I get a quote I don't like, or no electrician will touch 
the job in the first place. At best it all happens and saves me a 
few hundred dollars per year, or less if I haven't got my figures 
right.

So, confronted with all that stress, yesterday I instead went into 
a frenzy of alterative power-saving projects: I found the API for 
the dynamic power pricing from my power company, worked out how to 
use it (hmm, currently a cheap 9.7113 cents per KW/hr), and 
confirmed the W/hr light on my "smart" electricity meter can be 
used to determine my current power consumption (which the power 
company also supplies via their API, but it's 24hrs out of date) 
with a light sensor reading the flashes. Then I worked out how to 
control the six GPIO pins of my Atomic Pi SBC from Linux to send 
out pulses at a rate determined by the half-hourly power pricing. 
Then I dug out my box of horizontal panel meters and decided I'd 
mount them up with a few in a row to show current and 
future-projected pricing in half-hour intervals alongside my 
current usage, controlled by a slow integrator circuit converting 
pulses from the Atomic Pi and the meter's W/hr light to an analogue 
voltage to drive the meters.

Then I sidelined all that because I had a more immediate idea: turn 
off my hot water service before my morning shower, then on again at 
the middle of the day when electricity is cheaper, so it heats all 
the cold water it's injested during my shower later when the sun's 
up and it's cheaper due to all the solar generation (or free if my 
own solar system is working near its maximum 4KW capacity, maybe). 
But the hot water service doesn't have a plug, so I can't add a 
timer to it without illegally messing with the house wiring. But it 
does have a high-current switch with a convenient lever-style 
handle. I could connect a car central locking solenoid to that and 
have a switch in the bathroom to toggle it. But would it have 
enough travel to move the switch all the way from on to off, and 
how would I design a frame to mount it on? Well stuff the 
electronics and just have a string running back to the bathroom!

So I spent a few hours routing string through tubes and back 
through the bathroom window. One string to pull the switch off from 
the bathroom, and another to pull it on from the kitchen at lunch 
time. But somehow it ended up such that I could pull the switch off 
standing outside my bathroom window, but the friction in the system 
added when I'm inside the bathroom is too much to pull it off from 
inside. So now after waking up I've got to open the back door and 
pull the string where it passes above there, before going to the 
shower. That won't be so nice to do naked in winter. Today of 
course now I'm trying to think of where I can find a suitable 
pulley to mount on the bathroom window frame to see if that helps.

Then there's another thing I've had on my mind for years. I've 
always thought having kitchens open to living areas is stupid. In 
summer you want to cool the living area, but you have all this 
stuff in the kitchen heating it up. Logically you'd close it up 
after cooking so the A/C only cools the living area. In winter 
you're also heating up the fridge all evening while it's working to 
stay cool. Plus you get all the cooking greases spreading through 
the air onto things outside the kitchen. It's stupid! So I've been 
thinking about walling it off for years. Yesterday I realised I 
could probably use a few old wooden pallets, just cutting off one 
side and stacking them up, with extra timber to join them together 
and form a doorway, so I nearly made a start on that.

But before that I discovered my washing machine had broken mid-way 
through washing my second load (clothes too dirty for the first 
load): dead power supply like a few years ago. But I guessed it 
would be the same dead chip I replaced then, for which I'd kept a 
spare. So I replaced that chip, switched it on, and it worked. But 
I guessed that chip must die from overheating, so I glued on a tiny 
little IC heatsink I had. Then I put it all back together, switched 
it on, and it was dead as a doornail again. Typical, just when I 
think I'm on top of something. The new chip seems dead too now. 
Some sort of short across the glue residue? Another component 
failing that causes it to die too? So that's today's project.

This is my problem. Nothing's really ever done, and no lessons are 
learnt that aren't disproved somehow later. My stepfather also rang 
up the day before to tell me that the brake fluid I'd changed in 
the Toyota Land Cruiser I've been trying to fix up enough to drive 
home from there (another long story, don't get me started on the 
days I spent removing/refitting the fuel tank) had all mysteriously 
leaked out. That was one job that seemed to have all gone well, as 
it should have given I've that done plenty of brake bleeding before 
at this point. But no, yet another new sub-project begins with a 
new mystery problem. I just get tired of trying to _do_ things. I 
think this is reflected with my hobbies. I was thinking how my more 
productive hobbies: computers, electronics, car mechanics, 
photography, haven't really been added to since my teens. My new 
interestes are sort of unfocused attempts at trying to escape from 
that drive to to create something, and the inevitable pain it 
entails. I got into going for short bushwalks and then visiting 
dams and reservoirs as good points of interest for that. As well as 
that I've got into nudism and indeed yesterday I ended up just 
walking naked outside and laying around on the ground in the 
evening sun instead of pulling the washing machine apart again, 
after a weird attempt to try and view my own sperm on an ancient 
microscope which I was suddenly somehow inspired to dig out (I 
could only get the lowest magnification to focus for some reason). 
Maybe that's the role my projects or hobbies play, a sort of slope 
of descreasingly important tasks that I can slide down, absorbing 
my annoying desire to achieve something, until I'm finally content 
to accept it's all a waste of time and just go away from all of it.

On that note, if there's a new hobby I am now heading towards it's 
probably camping. I'm definitely suffering from Tomasino's issue of 
rotating interests there since my progress with fixing up the 
trailer I want to turn into a camper tailer is just glacial. Next 
step is wiring up the lights, which is right up my alley, but it's 
been waiting for a month or two. But then that's not camping, it's 
work towards camping, but then camping is just my means of 
holidaying without spending too much money, which is just another 
means of escaping from all these projects in the first place. It's 
really all a catch-22.

Now I could just buy a camper trailer. I mean I'm not really as 
poor as I make out, I've easily got enough savings to buy a decent 
second-hand camper trailer, or if I was really unafraid of digging 
into my savings even a brand new one. But I don't know how long 
I'll be making that money back on my unstable income, and the more 
I need to make, the more work I need to put into my business 
projects. Projects to serve others, which have added stress from 
dealing with people (like I have with the solar system), and then 
that creates the need for an escape as well.

So is the hobby all a trick? The hobby distracts you from your 
troubles, but in turn brings you new troubles, which you solve with 
a different hobby. Perhaps you can only really settle on one hobby 
if your life overall is really settled and satisfied? I guess I 
know I'm not completely satisfied, between my hassles trying to 
make money, my hassles trying to save money so I don't have to make 
it, and my general befuddlement about how to, or whether to, really 
try and meet women. Maybe hobbies are just a way I spin my wheels 
while I can't really see a way of getting anywhere beyond that. Or 
then again maybe one of them is exactly where I'd go if I did feel 
satisfied in life, and doubling-down on it might bring forth my 
answers. Doubling down on electronics didn't work for that, but I 
guess ideally I need to do something that makes money, attracts 
women, and doesn't really piss me off. Yep, but I've got no ideas 
on that front.

 - The Free Thinker