Free hobbies

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My Aspie husband and I are both currently unemployed, looking for work. In our down time, we have little to nothing to entertain ourselves. We either watch TV (no cable, so never anything new), or play video games.

He plays World of Warcraft most of the time, while I either watch TV or play Fallout 3. I'm finding that when he isn't playing WoW to occupy him, he becomes worrisome about our unemployment situation and eventually is on the brink of an anxiety attack, complete with hyperventilation.

We have no income to spend on entertainment, but desperately need more to do with our time, especially him. I'm curious what other Aspies do with their time if they are mostly indoors, or ways I could help alleviate his anxiety.

I'll admit that I hate it when people say this to me, but it sounds like he'd benefit from some exercise, preferably outdoors. (Probably too obvious to point out that walking around is free.) Good luck to you both!

Exercise has been a suggestion of mine that I've been trying to follow as well (I have Bipolar Disorder and I'm crazy out of shape), but he simply will not do it and brushes it off as nonsense. :/

Hmm. Lending books (or whatever the word for that is) from the library? And then reading them ofc.

Volunteering is good for the volunteer and others.

What about musical instruments?

Wouldn't buying a musical instrument be expensive?

Walking is a great hobby and it's free.

It can be pleasant if one has a means to listen to music while walking.

Some free indoor things I like to do (some of which have already been mentioned) include reading books from the library, researching my special interests online, blogging, playing my musical instrument, cooking, engaging in religious observances and practices, and playing elaborate kinky sex games with my partner.

What are you and your partner actually interested in? It's hard to motivate yourself to engage in a hobby just for the sake of having a hobby, but it's easy to take something you already think is fun to the next level.

Also, you might check out Hulu.com--you can watch lots of TV online there for free.

My god get some hobbies that'll earn you some income. I haven't been bored in about 10 years cuz I have so many hobbies. An excellent free hobby (if you have the internet) is web building and programming. On top of it being free you can make money with it. If you don't already know it I recommend starting by learning HTML. Then learn PHP and MySQL. Then learn a bit of CSS and javascript and you have all the tools you need to make any website or web application you want. When you can make websites you just need to come up with a service that people will pay for. The main type of site I pay for continuously are file sharing websites. I used to use the free version of rapidshare but nowadays I just pay for it since its not that expensive and it saves a load of hassle. They probably make about $2 a month off me but considering there are thousands of people like me paying for that service thats a lot of money they're making. A good money making hobby which requires an initial investment is resin casting. An idea for making money with it is replicating warhammer models. Warhammer is this fantasy game where people collect these Lord of the Rings style models but the models are expensive as hell. You could easily replicate them with resin casting and sell them to warhammer nerds.

Jesus christ, I wish I had spare time to spend on hobbies. My problem is I never have enough time. One hobby I took up a while ago is lock picking. I got a bench grinder and started making my own lock picks and rakes from hack saw blades then bought a few different locks and practiced picking them. If you get good at making lock picks you can easily make money selling specialty picks on ebay. You could start a service where you take requests to make specific hard to find picks. This requires some investment though, at the very least you need to buy a bench grinder and hacksaw blades to start making picks. After that a variable speed dremel will make things a whole lot easier then there are plenty of things you can get to increase the quality of your picks like a printer + glue so you can glue templates to the hacksaw blades, sandpaper to smooth the metal, shrink wrap for making handles with good grip etc. I really got into this hobby, I only stopped cuz when I moved house I forgot to bring the bench grinder. Honestly there are thousands of good hobbies to take up, I'm amazed you have none at all.

Last edited by cnidocyte on 24 Mar 2011, 3:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

My husband's strongest point of interest is computers. He builds and fixes them, which is what he was doing for work until recently. He did have a website he was building, and you've reminded me. I'll bring it up to him and see where it takes us.

Our sex life is doing pretty well, I like to provide him with plenty of release to try to keep his anxiety down.

My interests are more artistic, such as drawing or music. Unfortunately we have different ideas of fun, such as repetitive activity. He tends to enjoy things that cycle repeatedly (like running quests in WoW), while I get frustrated and bored.

Is repetitive activity something most aspies lean toward?

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download and watch anime together....

I'll agree with the web development post. I taught myself all of that along with server administration, network security, graphic design. All for free online.

For the past couple years I freelance working from home making websites for businesses and such.

Other free things to do:

Origami
Photograhy (learn how to creatively light and to use image editing software)
Gardening (not quite free but it pays for itself)
Biking (once you have the bike)
Tinkering, fixing, and modifying things.

Go to the library and read. Doesn't cost a thing, unless you are late returning a book...

Meditate.