What's the use of a hobby? What happens when a hobby dies

What's the use of a hobby?

Is it just to give myself confidence when I look back at how much I have improved myself over time? The slow and consistent improvement gives me joy when I look back, even if there's no one else in the world to validate it.

Hobbies make my life feel more meaningful and valuable, and then that internalizes and manifests outwardly as pride, joy, and confidence (e.g. being able to look someone in the eye and smile), EVEN if I never tell anyone else about my accomplishments in that hobby. That's probably what hobbies are useful for.

I wonder if a animals have hobbies. Maybe they don't because they're too busy getting better at fighting/hunting/surviving/attracting a mate.

Maybe that's what hobbies are really for too - attracting a mate. Because as explained above, it'll make us happy and confident about what we can accomplish in our lives, and we are all attracted to confidence.

So.... hobby on.

Death of a hobby:

I want to be able to do cutbacks and get into barrels for surfing, but I'm not sure what's the whole point of it is after I stop the hobby. I know i'm going to move away from the beach soon. And I've noticed for myself that I need to surf about twice a week in order to maintain my shoulder muscles, or else I can't paddle for shit. So then that just means I will sooner or later give up this hobby. 

When I partake in it now, it's just for the current fun and joy I get out of it, which is totally fine. I guess the future joy in it comes from being able to look back and say "yeah i did that." Just like "yeah, I've been to Europe", or "yeah I have 5 years of engineering experience, I did that", and that gives us a sense of joy/confidence. 

hrm.. I'd need to think more about "death of a hobby" and how that'll impact me. Professional athletes sometimes retire early even when they're still young and healthy because they feel accomplished enough. Or rich people retire early because they've earned enough.

So retiring or stopping early in a pursuit doesn't mean that pursuit was a worthless ambition - because they've already met their goal and when they look back, they feel happy about it. I guess same thing goes for my hobbies that I eventually quit.

Didn't do the jump

I looked at the jump as I was sliding towards it.
And thought, "it's not worth it."
I feared it. I didn't want to get hurt and break a wrist.
"It's not worth it."

Immediately after I said that to myself, another voice asked:
Is this what it feels like to get old?
To not be excited about the things that used to excite me?
To not task risks that I would have taken before?
To not crave that adrenaline?

What will this mean in terms of creating a startup? Would it relate?
Is that why some crazy amazingly successful startups are started by people in their 20s, because people in their 20s are too young, in-experienced, cocky, and foolish to know what's impossible, so they attempt it... and succeed?

I hope that I will still chase the impossible.

Luckily, a few hundred yards down the mountain, I found a box, tried to ride it, ate shit really hard, and told myself I'm done with boxes for today, maybe forever. And then on the next run. I rode the box again. And again, and again, I rode that dumbass box 8 more times that day, falling 6 of the 8 times. Success, even if trivial success from hobbies, still felt good.

Maybe those small failures over trying to ride down a slippery ass, icy, hard plastic and metal box are not forecasts of my ability to take risks and overcome adversity in my career and life. Or maybe they are. Maybe the ability to take risks and overcome adversity is like a muscle. And pushing myself out of my comfort zone works that muscle- from snowboarding boxes and jumps that scare me,  to paddling for waves that will pound my ass into the sea floor if I'm a second late on the takeoff, to cold showers that make me scream like a banshee when I first jump in.... to quitting my comfortable day-job in exchange for days and nights stayed-up working on my own project, to registering a company, to taking out a loan... to going to vegas with the last few dollars in your company's bank account and gambling with it to turn it into payroll for your employees so your company can last just a few more weeks... and turn into the Fedex it is today?

One tip I heard was that while on a box, look at the end of the box where you'll ride/jump off. That'll get you through it.

dropping glass balls

“Imagine life is a game in which you are juggling five balls. The balls are called work, family, health, friends, and integrity. And you’re keeping all of them in the air. But one day you finally come to understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls—family, health, friends, integrity—are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered.” -James Peterson

On some days, it feels like nothing is going right. I am dropping all the balls, even the glass ones. And it hurts. In some months, those days just keep on coming, back to back, until it is raining, pouring, glass balls dropping and shattering until I can't distinguish the individual crashes, and all it is is a roar, a sickening flood, and every night ends with the thought of, "I failed today".

Surfing is a drug. Unlike snowboarding

With snowboarding, you are sliding downhill and it's guaranteed you'll get some speed (either through riding or tumbling). But you'll get down.

With surfing, that is not guaranteed. As a starting surfer, I have often been in the water for 2 hours and not caught a single wave. But when I know I'm about to catch a wave, there's a certain rush that happens. For me, the thing that keeps me coming back is not even riding the wave (probably because I haven't ridden many and don't know how good it can get yet). But the thing that keeps me coming back is the gush of dopamine I feel RIGHT before I get up on the wave. When I feel my board catch, and all my brain keeps firing off the question "IS THIS ONE MINE? THIS ONE IS MINE!!". The build-up and climax and rush of bliss felt at that moment is only comparable to.... an orgasm? (I wouldn't know cuz I've never experienced one. Lol jk.) But some moments that I've felt that, I didn't even catch it, because the split second after, I lost balance or misstepped and crashed and burned into the cold surface of the wave and was trashed and tumbled.

Ok, maybe it's similar to jumps in snowboarding. With jumps and tricks, snowboarding becomes a different beast. Because there is build-up. There is the approach to the jump and all the sound of the board sliding against the snow as you make minor adjustments and try not to shit your snowpants. There is the ramp up, which goes by in a flash, as you kind of stop thinking. There is the jump, and you become airborne and all the noise quiets down as if you've just entered the vacuum of space. And it has been bulding-up... to right about now. To right when you land, and you KNOW that you'll stick this one. And you stick it. Or you don't, and you fall hard, and really do shit your pants. (I have come close - to where it took all my strength to hold my sphincter.)

First time to Europe - Partying in Prague then Car Renting in Germany

My transition from Prague to Germany (train from Prague to Dresden, then rent-a-car from Dresden to Berlin and Sachsenhausen) went like this:

• Put my backpack in a storage locker at Prague's main train station (Praha hlavní nádraží) for a damn good deal (3 euros was it for a small locker? It was the cheapest I could find compared to other luggage storage options). The station's closed from midnight to 3:30 am or something though, but that was fine. I had a 42 liter pack.

• Go clubbing in Prague at the 5 story club till it closed at 5am. Turned into a bunch of guys, somewhat homoerotic... hehe.

• Club closes and I check out the Charles river a bit. It was a little before sunrise, so it was fun to play with the camera settings on my One Plus One smart phone (F/2.0 aperture). Short lesson of all I know about photography - there are 3 main elements to it:
• Aperture: The f-stop number. You can't change this on a smartphone. The larger the number, the smaller the aperture, so F1.0 would be very big and F16 very small. The aperture size affects field of view and how much light is let in.
• Shutter Speed: You CAN change this on a smart phone. The longer it is, the more light gets let in (for darkly lit shots), but the more blurry things get. To get the photos below, I had to use the countdown timer and leaned the phone against a rock so that I wouldn't disturb it at all (because I had set shutter speed to like 4 or 8 seconds).
• ISO: I just think of this as graininess vs brightness. The lower the ISO, the less grainy the image seems, but also the darker the image seems. So the photos below had low ISO.

Charles River

• Anyway, onto the train station! I walk/jog to the station and make it on time, but was a bit scared at first because the displays didn't show my train or platform until about 30 minutes before the train was to arrive (I was still kind of inebriated)
• I for some reason become obsessed with taking pictures/videos of this train station

Prague Main Train Station

Prague Main Train Station

• The train looks kinda crappy from the outside, but really nice from the inside!

• The 2 hr train ride from Prague to Dresden is really beautiful. But I was really sleepy. But it was also really sunny!

  

  Prague to Dresden Train Ride

  
  
• I finally get the Dresden, and make my way over to the avis rent-a-car, located pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Dresden actually has 3 Rent-a-car locations, and the city looked MUCH bigger than it did on google maps. The place I got the car from was: Dresden Downtown, RD7 Friedrich Strasse 24. I pre-paid online for their online-price, and it came out to 93 euros (including everything except gas) for 24 hrs. I specifically wanted the "BMW 3 series or similar" notch because I wanted to experience driving the ultimate driving machine on the autobahn. The process was extremely painless. I just needed to show them my US California's driver license (I don't have an international driver's license or anything)
• I got to Avis and they gave me a VW (WTF!!!). It's a VW Tiguan and they say it's in the same class. It might be in terms of comfort, but I wanted horsepower, and it was lacking :( 
• My return location was Berlin Center Budapester Str 43 (I chose that because it was near my hostel and open 24/7). Fuel ended up being about 43 euros.
• Driving on the autobahn was a fun experience. 
• Most areas are 2 to 3 lanes
• There are zones with speed limits and zones without
• You should always stay in the right (slow) lane unless you're passing
• There was one time I was passing some slow cars and took a little too long in the fast lane, and noticed an Audi roaring up behind me, so I quickly go to the right lane
• The Audi followed me.
• I was confused as to why, until I saw the Porsche roaring gunning behind the Audi's ass and then burning past both the Audi and I. (And I was flooring it, going about 200kmph)
• I burned a police car and was about to brake check right when I saw him, but realized I was on the autobahn, and continued to floor it
• Most people don't floor it because it wastes gas. Most people drive similar to US freeway speeds
• I drive past Berlin and go see Sachsenhausen concentration camp. (It's kind of out of the way from downtown Berlin, so I thought this was a good chance to see it, instead of dealing with public transpo).
• Sachsenhausen was a "model" concentration camp that other camps were modeled after. 

• Sad and disturbing place. You can form your own thoughts about it. The exhbit that disturbed me the most was the "hospital" and "post mortem" area, where the Nazis dissected humans.

• Anyway, with that visit behind me, I go back to Berlin and pick up my buddy from the Hostel to get Ramen and we cruise. It basically feels like we're back at home in the US again. (He had already gotten there and checked in after taking the train directly from Prague to Berlin because he didn't trust my ability to drive without sleep and speed limit. Pfftttt)
• There's an amazing tunnel that goes under the Berlin Hbf (central train station).

Finally starting to understand MVC

This node.js MEAN stack tutorial just might have been the best web development tutorial I've gone through:
http://www.bradoncode.com/tutorials/learn-mean-stack-tutorial/

I've gone through the django polls one as well as part of an RoR tutorial, but either those weren't as clear or (more likely) I was too dumb and needed it see it explained several times in different ways, this MEAN stack tutorial made a lot of sense.

On the server side:

• Model (*.model.js) = the database
• Controller (*controller.js) = has all the CRUD calls (create, retrieve, update, delete...)
• View? (*routes.js) = handles the REST calls from the client (web browser) and calls the appropriate functions in controller.js

Admittedly, I have no idea where the V(view) is supposed to be. I guess that's the routes.js? And I also don't know why the whole thing works javascript wise (e.g. the functions are written very smartly, in a way I'm not used to writing them). Guess I still have no idea what's going on :(


And the difference between REST and CRUD is explained very well here:
http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/120716/difference-between-rest-and-crud

You never know

Wasn't sure if I locked the car door today when I got to my desk. So I got up and walked back to the parking lot. As I was approaching it,