One of my friends is obsessed with plants and gardening.

And I always thought to myself, “how boring!”

But now that I’m a little bit older…I think he was on to something.

Because plants are awesome are gardening isn’t boring at all!

What hobbies are considered boring but really aren’t at all?

AskReddit users shared their thoughts.

1. A lot out there.

“Collecting coins. There are so many weird ways of doing this hobby.

It can bring you to the deep recesses of eBay, a garage sale or flea market in the middle of nowhere, your grandmother’s attic or a random field with a metal detector.

And there are so many variations on HOW. you can collect memorabilia coins, state quarters, pre-war coins, silver coins, gold coins or coi s from a specific year or whatever qualifier you can think of.”

2. “Boring.”

“I have a few “boring” hobbies.

Reading – every book is an adventure

Sewing – I find it very relaxing, and have fun trying new patterns.

Puzzles.”

3. Sounds cool.

“Watching trains.

Even my own family is like “it’s so boring” but I like thinking about where it came from and where it’s going.

I like the noise and love the rumble in the ground when a hard working train goes by.”

4. Wow.

“Lock picking for sure.

I see a lot of people with this mentality that only criminals pick locks but I’m here to tell you that is not the case. Matter of fact most criminals do not pick locks at all.

If you like puzzles and complex mental exercises, lock picking is great. Calming, filled with satisfaction and develops fine motor skills. Theres nothing else I have found that has the support, and community behind it.

I have met great people in this hobby and we basically are all like a knitting club, but with lock picking. Definitely a place to develop life long friends.”

5. Agreed!

“History.

Learning about any time frame in history you want/like.

It’s not boring, it’s fascinating.”

6. Blow your mind!

“Radio astronomy.

Receiving a signal that was made when the star that calcium that our bones was come from was still a billion years away from going supernova puts things in perspective.”

7. Now you get it.

“My husband has a couple of fish tanks he absolutely loves.

I never saw the appeal, but he’s so enthusiastic about them that I’m quite invested now.”

8. That’s different.

“I collect and breed insects.

Other folks seem entirely disinterested in the fact that my female orchid mantis just devoured the male so completely that all that remains of him are his wings.

That jumping spiders dance, waving their little arms and wiggling from side to side and that my female has made like 500 babies from that one pairing.

That the atlas moth is a nightmare to breed since they don’t synchronise their emergence very well and only live for like 4-8 days when they do emerge. That silk moths are very prone to bacterial infections but are the most adorable things on the planet.

That the reason my hissing roach colony is only moderately sized because every time a female gives birth a bunch of her fellows charge up to her and start eating the babies as they come out. Yet thankfully they all run for cover ASAP so some do survive long enough to harden up their exoskeleton. That increasing their protein food content does nothing to prevent the mass m**der.

I can go on for f**king hours. I love nature and bugs are so very interesting. Hissing roaches for example hiss in the same way that we do. By exhaling air. That ghost mantids are semi social and can be kept in colonies.

That caring for beetles means largely just looking after a pot of soil for a year or so. Occasionally digging up the larvae and weighing it as it persistently tries to wiggle away.

Like how is this boring? You need to see the feeding frenzy when roaches or born or how the female extrudes the eggs from time to time to air them out prior to birth. How the males get into head butting contests. Hissing up a storm.

Seriously some folks have made the mistake of thinking I owned a very disgruntled pet snake they hiss that loudly.”

9. Be a lifelong learner.

“Learning.

You have the internet where you can learn anything you wish in hundreds of enjoyable ways and it’s practically free.

Gaining knowledge should feel awesome.

It’s a shame school does the opposite to most people.”

10. Up in the sky!

“Birding.

People love hiking and going outdoors but as soon as you add in birds suddenly it’s seen as “boring”.

Birds are so diverse and you’ll never know everything there is to know.”

11. That’s unique.

“Growing algae.

I sometimes grab some empty glass containers, ones that I cleaned and wanted to reuse.

Fill it with water (rain water is the best) put in a bit of soil or any organic matter.

I have a good collection of algae jars and a big bucket. They don’t need much maintenance and look cool too!

It feels good when you see how you just recycled and produced oxygen for free. I mean I’m at least not a waste of oxygen.”

12. So satisfying.

“Hand sewing. It’s meditative and yet requires a lot of attention to detail and skill to do effectively.

Tiny stitches are so satisfying and take a lot of practice. The different applications of techniques requires a lot of technical know how, and there’s a lot of math and abstract thinking involved, especially in structured or highly tailored garments.

I’m planning to start making a bodice for Renaissance faire this weekend since as of right now it looks like we’re set to get at least part of a season, and I already know my pattern is going to require a LOT of adjusting. Because it’s so many pieces, it’s going to take some trial and error to reshape them. I hate that fiber craft, garment creation, etc. are considered “soft” arts, I’d love to see some engineering bro try to figure out how to draft a corset pattern.

New challenge everyone, make a corset or set of stays to your measurements from a Janet Arnold pattern and a video you found on YouTube.”

13. Give it a shot.

“Language learning.

It’s slow, methodical, and can be frustrating at times, but that moment when you can form simple sentences without much effort is probably one of the most gratifying feelings I’ve ever felt.”

14. A good one!

“Trying to learn a new language.

It’s a really fun process although sometimes it can feel like a grind.”

15. Just like Mr. Miyagi.

“Bonsai.

I thought it would be a nice little jaunt since you only have to look after them like 3 times a year and major attention every few years as long as you water and fertilize regularly.

Lies. All lies.

Days planning and diagramming how I’m going to f**k up this tiny tree I’ve invested years in. Multiple books bought and read.

Then like 12 f**king hours wiring up this tree and painstakingly watching to see if the apex is gonna do what I want or if that Jin is going to f**king work out.

I grow orchids. I thought they were b*tchy. I had not yet experienced the wrath of a juniper in a place that does not hit freezing temps.”

16. Mapmaker.

“Making detailed and realistic maps.

I grew up poor so to entertain myself I used to draw very realistic maps and play imaginary scenarios based on the map.

Eventually my family got a computer and I started using google sketch up to make maps and flags.

Now as an adult with a good paying job, I play EU4, HoI4 and CK2.

But I still enjoy making maps whenever I have a pencil and a blank paper. Imagination has no limits.”

17. Sounds good to me.

“Finding cool rocks. No joke.

You get to walk about, seeing cool things, breathing fresh air, and you get a geology lesson.”

18. I’d like to try this.

“Painting.

You’re constantly adapting to what the paint is doing, thinking, using your intuition, and you’re a lot more active than you appear to be.”

19. Playlists for days.

“I don’t know if this qualifies as a “hobby”, but I love making Spotify playlists for super obscure themes, like “the summer of 1997” or “the feeling you get when you realize you are driving too fast and it’s raining” or “these would make a good soundtrack for a zombie movie”.

I’m currently working on a playlist of songs to play a stranded Victorian era time traveler to get them up to speed on 21st century American musical culture.”

20. Can’t stop, won’t stop.

“Woodworking with hand tools.

I’m addicted and have bought 5 hand planes and can’t stop.”

21. Knittin’.

“Actually, knitting.

If you can do it right it’s actually fun.

Note that you’ll probably rage quit if you get it wrong.”

22. A green thumb.

“Raising plants, particularly succulents, has been way more eventful and exciting than I expected it to be.

I always thought raising plants was like this thing where you water something every day and then six months later it grows an inch and that’s it.

But I have a decent collection of different plants now, and they all have their own needs, their own unique behaviors, they’re different ages and so some flower and some don’t yet, they express their needs in different ways, and they change and move around much faster than you might expect. I’ve got some that are eternal and unchanging of course, but many more that are different every day.

I’ve got one plant that is so fast it can practically dance, and if it needs more light I’ll find it twisted into a completely different position every day until I move it somewhere more sunny and it settles down.

Not to mention by gaining an interest in plants, I’ve started paying attention to the plants around me in my neighborhood as I walk my dog, and I’ve started cataloging all the different flowers and weeds and shrubs I find. I’ve even found a few wild-growing succulents that I’ve taken samples of and am now cultivating at home, one of which even bloomed and gave me seeds which I’m going to try to grow!

It’s been so much fun and very educational.”

23. Aerial combat.

“Bird watching.

Sometimes you see aerial combat taking place with these birds, especially crows against hawks.”

24. Highly recommended.

“Geocaching.

I started this when my then GF and I were dirt poor in college and now we have logged about 1700 caches in about a dozen different countries.

Even just doing it near our home is awesome, because you get to see things you’d never see otherwise.

Highly recommend.”

25. Explore the night sky.

“Astronomy.

I got my first look through a telescope at 13 yo. My school had its own little observatory, and a few of us (mostly those specialising in physics or maths for A-level) were in the Astronomy Club. What hooked me wasn’t the stars, it was the planets.

Even with quite a lot of light pollution there was, for me, something magical about being able to look at the moon as if you were hovering just a short distance above its surface. And the planets all have their own charms. Jupiter is perhaps the most interesting, both in terms of the planet itself and in terms of its moons: I love checking that the moons are where they’re meant to be – I think of them as a sort of clock.

I know that I’m doing nothing more significant than checking the observations that others have made before me, and verifying what others have already calculated, but I feel that in some small way I’m helping to continue the validation of the great work of others. And like many others, I have my little patches of lunar geography that I watch pretty regularly, just in case anything has changed.

I suppose it’s not exciting, but it’s interesting to see our neighbor as the light and shadows change.”

What “boring” hobbies do you think are actually pretty awesome!

Talk to us in the comments.

We’d love to hear from you!