Hobbies

By Definition: a hobby is an activity or interest pursued for pleasure or relaxation and not as a main occupation.

Everyone has them, whether we know it or not, all of us are bound to have interests and therefore have quite a few, some more than others but nevertheless, interesting hobbies. However I am not really interested in knowing what everyone's hobbies are because it would just be a whole array of activities which I may or may not find interesting. One person's hated activity can be another person's hobby.

I'm more interested in the hobbies that pilots have, and that is of course other than flying. A lot of people fly for the pleasure of flying and that is a hobby but many others fly for a living but that doesn't mean it isn't a pleasure, in actuality pilots should be flying for a living or choose to fly for a living for the main purpose of pleasure and interest...however I know that may change as time passes by.

So other than flying, pilots do have a variety of other pleasurable activities. I (and quite a few of my classmates) for instance enjoy photography. It's our way to express our creative side since we're all bound to the same old, SOPs or Checklists, so I guess it is our way of expressing ourselves in a more artistic way. We learn not only to have a good eye in approaches, flying, or seeing things ahead of an airplane, we also learn to see light, shapes, lines, context, depth of field, all the many things a good photographer uses his/her eye for. Since a camera can't see things exactly the way a complex human eye does, we have to learn to adapt and see how the camera would see it and so on. Just like when people squint one eye and make a small rectangular box with their fingers to see things in a rectangular shape because that's what the camera sees! With that I think its an opportune moment to advertise my flickr account here.


Anyways, that's one of the many popular (I think) hobbies a lot of pilots do on their free time, for fun, for relaxation, for whatever it may be. Others (and some of them I do enjoy as well) also write to express their feelings, some take acting or dancing lessons, sing, watch sci-fi movies, read,...the list just goes on.

There are a number of websites that list the most popular hobbies that people do in the world, one website lists some agreeably top 50 ones here.. However I have yet to find a list of the most popular hobbies that pilots do, and I would guess that a lot of these hobbies would have some kind of similarity to each other, since most pilots already do have one thing they share with each other...enjoy watching or being in...airplanes.

When I find one, or compile one if no one has yet to take the initiative to do so, I shall post it here and see what kind of things would be on the list and possibly be one of my many hobbies as well.