If you have some time on your hands, you may be thinking about
taking up a new hobby or developing an existing interest
further. As you are no doubt aware, the list of hobbies and
interests is endless so this series of pages is not intended to
be comprehensive.What it might do, however, is to help you think about this whole
area of your life slightly differently, so that you make the
right choices when deciding what to take up. Clearly, we have to
enjoy the hobbies that we do – that’s the whole point of them.
However, as we get a bit older there is a need for us to do some
or all of the following:
· Make the most of our money
· Keep fit physically
· Keep fit mentally
· Maintain or increase our social contacts
Therefore, if our hobbies can help us do these things, so much
the better. For example, if you like reading, which is
essentially a solitary occupation, try joining a reading group,
or book club, which will enable you to meet other people through
your reading. Similarly, if you like walking, this will help
keep you fit, enable you to meet people if you join a walking
group and might even save you some money because you’re not
using the car so much!
So we have grouped some examples of hobbies and interests under
various headings, not just those shown above, to help you think
about what you might do and how you might use them to achieve
other ends as well as enjoying them. The headings are not
definitive and you might feel you would have used different
ones. Sometimes we might stray into the realms of what you might
think is voluntary work. Neither of these things matter. The
point is that if it helps you think about hobbies and interests
in a constructive and useful way, we have succeeded in our
objectives.
Some of the things we haven't included are collecting things
(anything!), model-making, amateur dramatics, wine and beer
making, astronomy, photography, graphology and about a million
other hobbies. Please don't be offended if your particular
favourite isn't here. Remember that the objective is to get you
thinking about the many wonderful hobbies and interests that you
can have in later life, not to list each and every one of them.
If you have a particular Hobby or Interest and would like to
research and write about it on the web, take a look at our
Associate scheme.
Now, take a look through the following pages and see if anything
takes your fancy – or something might trigger another
inspiration. If you don’t find what you want, however, take a
look at the
Sports and Activities
section, or go to
Amazon where you will be
certain to find a book on the hobby or interest of your choice
Visit our
Pre-retirement Courses
section here on laterlife or our
dedicated Retirement Courses site
|
