Get a hobby? What a hassle.

My Girlfriend keeps telling me that I need a hobby. She thinks I need something to occupy my time between going to work, going to sleep, walking the dogs, transporting the kids, picking up the few groceries, ironing my shirts, mowing the lawns, washing the car, fixing the odd household item, feeding the cats, tending the roses, picking up a few more groceries, closing the gate, eating my tea, fetching the mail, paying the bills and putting out the trash.

And you know what? The more I think about it, the more I think that maybe she’s right. Maybe I do need to find to something to occupy my spare time.

I did try sports for a while. But I found the commitment that it required too burdensome. I mean, take any sport - once you’ve committed yourself to it then you’re there for the whole season. And quite frankly, watching a whole season of cricket or rugby or football or tennis on the digital network can be quite arduous at times. Besides, one day when I asked my Girlfriend to bring me another beer, she quite rudely inferred that when she had suggested I get a hobby, she meant something that actually involved physical activity

Physical activity, Hmmm...

I thought about taking up jogging for about five minutes; starting a fitness drive. But then I got to thinking about the science of jogging and it scared me. Like, have you ever noticed how it’s always those lean fit guys who jog every day that have the fatal heart attacks? They’ll be bounding their away through the local parklands and then… BANG!... without any warning their heart blows a valve and down they go - smackeroo on the face - dead as a dingo in a drainpipe.

Meanwhile the other guys, the ones that have a bit more girth from drinking heaps of beer and eating one too many tacos and pies… They get a few pains in the chest while watching TV, get rushed to the ER in an ambulance, and receive a triple bi-pass and a new diet of chicken seed and rabbit food. They then get sent home with their wives and their newly prescribed insulin where they go on and live well into their eighties!!!

So naturally, I ruled out jogging…

I did try photography for a bit. I dug out the old digital Kodak, a beauty that cost $98.50 at the K-Mart two years earlier (because I’ve always preferred to go for quality), and started taking photos all over the place. The first day I went down to the river and took photos of all the ducks and the geese, some old trees and a few tourists doing touristy things. The second day I went out to a small rural area and took photos of some sheep and some cows and a horse and two tractors (a Massey Ferguson and a John Deer). On the third day I went down to the local school and took photos of the kids playing handball, hopscotch, skip, hide and seek and knuckle bones. On the fourth day the police came around to my house and confiscated my camera, computer and DVD collection…

And that was the end of my photography phase...

I then discovered modelling – no, not the speedo type – making plastic stuff and painting it. In particular, I got into this model gaming thing where you make little armies of fantasy creatures like dwarves and elves and chaos warriors and orcs. Then you paint them up into clans – and you invent your own clans and create sub-clans and special regiments, and you develop unique cultures and technologies to go with them and these are based on the environmental background and associated economic infrastructure specific to your chosen creature types. Then you meet with other modellers and battle against their clans using special battle dice, slide rules, protractors, spell cards and secret maps. I called my clan 'The Medicinemanadroids' and it primarilly consisted of mutant dwarves and cannibalistic elves with one regiment of death knights from Gazaboor. And I designed an intricate tartan of four colours that I would paint on all my models – it would take up to seven coats over four days to get it right.

But then I realised that the other guys around the table were detail obsessed dweebs... who would have thought? So I felt compelled to give up the model gaming thing too...

But I've kept all my 'Medicinemanadroids' and you're welcome to come round and see them – I've named all 147 of them and created their own unique character profiles and everything. It's a pity that all those other guys were so out of touch with reality.

Finally, my Girlfriend's father dragged me along to his Old Man's Club. He figured I might find something of interest there. Instead I found a lot of men slouched in chairs, sipping beer and staring at wide-screen TVs. It felt just like my sporting phase.

So I've gone full-circle and still haven't found a hobby to help pass the time. So I've just answered an ad in the paper to join a Philanderers' group... I'm off there tonight. I think that maybe I might enjoy collecting stamps...

That's what I think... And usually I'm right.